Atla’s research tools rely on the applied expertise of Atla’s metadata team. Atla’s metadata analysts and editors synthesize research from a wide range of academic resources and make decisions about the most relevant subjects to include in the records in our databases to support discovery by our community of researchers and students. Their depth of knowledge ensures that Atla’s research tools support the successful discovery of relevant research from diverse academic sources.
This month we feature Metadata Archivist Kathryn Sheriff
Kathryn was born and raised in Corsicana, Texas. Her introduction to the scholarly world of religious education came in high school when she attended a summer institute program in theological studies at Emory University. Here, she was able to experience how religion informed and related to topics that were important to her, such as social justice, with a class on Jesus and Nonviolence standing out as particularly inspiring in this regard.
When she completed high school, Kathryn attended Carleton College in Minnesota. Here, she took full advantage of the liberal arts education available to her and took classes on any subject she found interesting. One such class on Liberation Theology, taught by an American Catholic religious sister and feminist theologian, convinced Kathryn to pursue a major in Religion. Her focus was Buddhist art, with a final thesis on the origin of the Buddha image, but she was also able to study art from a wide variety of other religions, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to depictions of Hindu deities. She also took the opportunity to study abroad in Sri Lanka during this time and experience the lives and practices of Buddhists beyond what she had ever seen before.
Having fallen in love with Sri Lanka, Kathryn was eager to return to South Asia after graduating from college. She accepted a teaching fellowship through Princeton in Asia that sent her to India for a year and following that, was awarded a Fulbright grant to return to Sri Lanka for additional study. Once this study was completed, Kathryn worked in coffee shops and planned her next move. She decided to return to school to study library science, and she matriculated at the University of Wisconsin in Madison to earn her master’s degree focusing on archival work, particularly archival access and digital archives. Once she completed her degree, she began working in archives, most recently at a university with an extensive collection of religious materials, particularly of the Southern Baptist denomination.
In 2022, Atla partnered with The Alliance for Christian Media, Inc. to secure a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. on behalf of Day1, the Alliance’s collection of outstanding and historically significant sermons and related materials from the mainline denominations of historic American Protestant churches starting in 1945. The grant helps improve access and discoverability of this collection for preachers and those who teach the practice of ministry. Atla has been tasked with curating the collection and enriching the sermons with metadata. To this end, once the project was announced, Atla began the search for an archivist to index 4000 sermons from more than 800 individual contributors.
When Kathryn learned of this role, she felt it was the perfect marriage of her interest in religion and theology and her skills as an archivist. She began work in February 2023, and the project is scheduled to be completed by 2026. As the sole person responsible for listening to and creating the metadata for each of these 4000 sermons, Kathryn has gotten to experience the full breadth of this impressive collection, which includes sermons from everyone from former US President Jimmy Carter to Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis, to children’s television host and Presbyterian minister “Mr.” Fred Rogers.
In working her way through this material, Kathryn particularly enjoyed hearing how ministers handled the controversial topics of the day. For example, a preacher in the 1950s may address the topic of racism in a roundabout way, struggling to find ways to discuss the topic in a public forum, as opposed to how it was spoken about in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement over the following decade. Opposition to communism was a constant theme, but as the Cold War evolved through the decades, how it was spoken about changed as well. The project, in Kathryn’s words, serves not just as religious education but also as a primary historical source of how people engaged with contemporary events.
When asked what role she believes Atla serves overall in the religion and theology space, Kathryn said,
(Atla is) working not only to provide great resources to scholars and religious practitioners but also to keep up with what they need and really be engaged with the direction of the field as a whole, making sure that the collections that are being indexed are more diverse every day.
She particularly appreciates the knowledge and passion Atla’s team members bring to the table, taking inspiration from them in her own work.
Outside of her work with Atla, Kathryn enjoys cooking, experimenting with new recipes and cuisines, and hiking through and exploring her home of the past five years, Macon, Georgia, where she lives with her husband, two children, and dog, who keep her very busy. Atla is fortunate to include Kathryn and her prodigious archiving skills on its metadata team and is looking forward to providing more updates on the Day1 project in the near future.
Read more information about Day1.
Find more information about coverage and how to access Atla’s trusted research tools on religion and theology.
View our full title lists, updated monthly.
Read more information on how content is evaluated and how to recommend a title for inclusion in Atla’s research tools.
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