Hoping to learn more about HKS Library & Research Services?
By Alessandra Seiter, Community Engagement Librarian
As a Harvard Kennedy School student, you’ll have access to a wide variety of resources and countless ways to immerse yourself in all that HKS has to offer. One such resource is Library & Research Services (LRS), which engages with the HKS community to create and share knowledge.
In the Q&A below, Community Engagement Librarian Alessandra Seiter discusses LRS’s offerings for students. In her role, Alessandra works closely with colleagues and community members across the School to ensure LRS resources are meeting the evolving research, curricular, and intellectual needs of HKS faculty, students, staff, and researchers. She also leads LRS’s special projects through close collaborations with internal and external partners.
What does the Library & Research Services team do?
HKS Library & Research Services supports HKS faculty, students, and staff in carrying out impactful scholarship to help make our world more just, safe, and sustainably prosperous. In addition to managing the HKS Library, we engage with HKS community members to create and share knowledge, connect them to the vast network of resources we curate and maintain, and invite the world to HKS scholarship and insights.
What is your favorite part about working on the Library & Research Services team?
I love building initiatives from the ground up based on community needs and interests, in close collaboration with stakeholders across the School. This is how we launched our Behind the Book faculty video series, Community Voices & Perspectives Collection which is completely driven by community requests, our children’s book and board game collections, student art gallery, monthly book displays, two-day intensive Data Carpentry workshop, Data + Donuts event series, and so many other programs that are now sustainable and impactful at HKS.
How do students connect with you?
How do students not connect with us?! Students can visit the HKS Library whenever campus is open, request an appointment with a librarian for in-depth research and data support, request books and explore online resources through HOLLIS, find topic-specific research resources in our Research Guides, attend one of the many events and learning opportunities we host every semester, find us tabling often in the Sunshine Lobby, subscribe to our newsletter, or email us any time with questions!
“In addition to managing the HKS Library, we engage with HKS community members to create and share knowledge, connect them to the vast network of resources we curate and maintain, and invite the world to HKS scholarship and insights.”
Alessandra Seiter, Community Engagement Librarian
What advice do you have for students considering HKS?
Remember your “why.” HKS offers so many opportunities, which is part of what makes our community and the education we offer so vibrant and valuable. But it also makes it easy to over-commit. If you reflect often on why you came to HKS and what impact you want to have once you graduate, you’ll be able to pursue HKS’s world-class courses, networking and mentorship opportunities, experiential offerings, and skill-building efforts more strategically.
What is your favorite HKS memory?
Every year, we host Halloween in the HKS Library. We decorate the library with skeletons, cobwebs, pumpkins, bats, and tea lights, and have plenty of candy at the front desk. We also bring our button maker to Degree Programs & Student Affairs’ annual Halloween celebration, and make upwards of 100 buttons with students and their families! It’s so wonderful to hear from students that the decorations and celebrations give them the lift they need to keep going on their assignments.
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