One of the things Dr. Melanie Zeck likes about being a reference librarian at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., is the “intellectual latitude” of her job. It’s an apt attribute for this gifted and intensely curious Kokomo, Indiana, native. Education through exploration was encouraged while growing up in the Zeck home. Father Jon is a retired deputy sheriff and longtime law enforcement historian in Howard County, Indiana. Brother Jon David is a popular local travel and lifestyle influencer with a degree from Indiana University Kokomo. And mother Patty taught science with vigor and distinction for 45 years at Northwestern High School. She joins her daughter this year as a fellow Hall of Legends inductee.

In fact, Melanie credits her parents for introducing her to the world of libraries and the rewards of research. Alongside her historian dad, the reference librarians at the Kokomo-Howard County Public Library taught her how to use a card catalog and she recalls the exhilaration of learning how to find new information that she had not seen before. That experience probably determined her future. “At college, I worked in the library,” she says. “Then I went to library school, and now I’ve been a librarian for over half my life. When you ask for my help with a problem or a question, it becomes our problem or question until it is satisfactorily answered. I just love that about research.”

The Kokomo High School graduate (1995) followed her mother’s undergraduate path to Indiana State University, leaving Terre Haute with two bachelor’s degrees. Next came two decades in Chicago, earning master’s degrees in library science (Dominican University) and musicology (Northwestern University), capped by a doctorate in Music History and Theory at the University of Chicago. She was a Research Fellow at the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) at Chicago’s Columbia College, co-authoring The Transformation of Black Music (Oxford University Press 2017) with CBMR founder, the late Dr. Samuel A. Floyd Jr. During that time, Zeck also was Managing Editor of the Black Music Research Journal.

Today, at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, Zeck serves as invited speaker, panelist, and moderator for events sponsored by organizations including Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, the Glenn Gould Foundation (Toronto), the League of American Orchestras, and the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Zeck has presented at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Music Library Association, the Society for American Music, the African Studies Association, and the Global Association for the Promotion of Swahili. Currently, she is editor of the Music Library Association’s Basic Manual Series.  

For Dr. Melanie Zeck, life is all about that latitude, to teach and explore from Kokomo to Kenya. And what’s the best thing about being a librarian? “Let us know what ideas you have. We’ll connect you to resources that have the potential to change your life.”