What I do at Yale:

As Yale's Librarian for Philosophy and German Humanities,

• I build the library's collections to support the students and faculty doing research in these areas;
• I am the library liaison for the departments of Philosophy and Germanic Languages & Literatures at Yale;
• I work on the reference desk in Sterling Memorial Library and regularly host Yale’s online reference chat Ask!Live;
• I develop and teach course-related or general research education sessions. If you would like to set up a session for your class or for yourself, please contact me directly.

About me:

Born in the metropolitan village of Werlte in rural Northwest Germany, I learned about the power of librarians in our one-room parish library, where I was not allowed to borrow Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre because it did not have a sticker saying “suitable for children”. The fascination with that power grew over the years, and once I had finished my Master’s Degree in German Studies at the University of Michigan – still not having read Goethe’s Wanderjahre – with a thesis over Kandinsky’s infatuation with Anthroposophy and Theosophy, I entered the secret inner world of libraries as a technician and web-master at the Ann Arbor District Library. Reassured, I left Ann Arbor a year later to pursue a postgraduate degree in Library Studies and Management at the Bibliotheksschule Frankfurt a.M., after which I embarked on my own Wanderjahre as a librarian that eventually brought me to Yale by way of Germany/Switzerland ( University of Konstanz Library) and the Netherlands ( University of Groningen Arts Library).