New Randolph Campus Librarian Kate Brooks hails from the small blue-collar town of Chesterton in northern Indiana. In her town’s church choir, Brooks met a high school German teacher and became fascinated with her level of passion and expertise for the language. The two developed a close friendship, and soon, Brooks was enamored with learning languages. “I lived in the high school language department. I took German, French, and Spanish. I wanted to take Japanese but I just didn’t have any more time,” Brooks said.  Her passion eventually earned her a study-abroad trip to Germany, her first time out of not just the country, but the state. She majored in Germanic studies, the first person in her family to go to college. “It felt awkward,” Brooks said of her first-generation status, “because people didn’t assume that I was a first-generation student… you want to fit in, but you don’t always know the questions to ask.”

She pursued a PhD at Columbia, with plans become a German professor, but eventually moved over to a Master of Library Sciences program, hoping for something more practical than academic. “Sometimes, when you make something you feel passionate about into work, it becomes work,” Brooks said about her change in professional focus. Her path has since moved from language libraries, taking her into digital humanities and now the Randolph campus library, where she can incorporate many of her interests in her work with students.