Kee Malesky

Christine Mary Malesky (; October 25, 1950 – March 2, 2025), better known as Kee Malesky, was an American reference librarian and writer. She was a reference librarian at NPR for more than 20 years.

Education and career After briefly working for NPR in an administrative position in the 1970s, Malesky left the network. She earned her master's degree library science from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC in 1986.

In March 1990, Malesky moved to NPR's News Reference Library. and determining whether to refer to the Italian city as Turin or Torino). Oftentimes, Malesky was one of only "two and a half" reference library staffers, and was the only reference librarian who worked weekends.

As of 2006, she was an adjunct faculty member of the member of the School of Library and Information Science at Catholic University. This was followed up two years later with the book Learn Something New Every Day: 365 Facts to Fulfill Your Life, a collection of daily facts covering history, science, and culture, in 2012.

She left NPR in 2014. Directed by Joshua Seftel and starring Danielle Perry in the title role, the film follows a teenage Malesky as she investigates the cause of her persistent cough, uncovers mold as the culprit, and exposes the frauds who dismissed her concerns. The jury of the Chicago International Children's Film Festival awarded it a Certificate of Excellence.

In 2011, NPR noted in an article about Wikipedia that Malesky kept "a running document of the site's flubs", but she was "not absolutely opposed to the concept of a free encyclopedia", and thought it could "be a good starting place for reference links or to get the gist of a topic".

Malesky died on March 2, 2025, at the age of 74.

Awards and honors

2006 News Division Henebry Award 2012 Dow Jones Leadership Award, Special Libraries Association

Publications

Books

Learn Something New Every Day: 365 Facts to Fulfill Your Life''. 2012.

Chapters