On January 31, Ellen Isenstein, director of the John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS) Library, retired after 26 years at the library—12 of them as director. Isenstein, a Belmont native, earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Intending a career as an elementary school teacher, Isenstein found herself drawn to librarianship—initially children’s librarianship—and secured a two-year internship in the Gifts and Exchange program in Harvard’s Widener Library. Subsequently, she earned her MLS from Simmons, served as a government documents librarian at the Boston Public Library (BPL) from 1968 to 1982, and returned to Harvard, this time to the Kennedy School. Isenstein was interviewed for Library Notes on February 18

LN
You set out to be a children’s librarian, but began your career in librarianship as an intern in Widener.

EI
I had sent off résumés and letters to all the public libraries in Massachusetts, when I heard about the internship
program at Widener—which obviously had nothing to do with children’s librarianship. I sent off an application, had an interview, and was offered the job—and I had no idea what a big academic library was like.

I was an intern in Gifts and Exchange for two years, which didn’t really give me a good sense of what librarians do in an academic library. Then the head of that department left for the Boston Public Library and I had another year of library school, so I applied for a job in documents receipts at Widener and got that—and that’s where I got my first step into Government Documents. Subsequently, I spent 14 years in Government Docs at the BPL.
 

LN
After which you arrived at the Kennedy School. It was 1982, and still the early days of the School. How did you imagine that the library would grow and change?

EI
I actually wasn’t thinking into the future at all. Graham Allison was our very dynamic dean. He was a great fundraiser and energizer. The School was going to grow, but it wasn’t what was really on my mind. It was the era when people were starting to do online searches, which was something that really excited me. I had taken a course in how to do that at Simmons, but there was no opportunity for that at the BPL. Initially, I was a reference librarian for the Kennedy School, and online searching was to be a big part of the job. That was the attraction for me.

LN
We need the perspective of time: when you helped with those early online searches, you were actually doing them, rather than teaching people to do them on their own.

EI
Exactly. None of us in 1982 could have imagined where we are now. For the first venture into “end-user searching,” we had this huge machine that operated a CD-ROM. You pressed a button, a light went on, and it would scroll through an index to newspapers. The students thought it was absolutely spectacular—and it did nothing except scroll through an index.

I also had a NEXIS terminal that took up half of my office. And it really was a dinosaur, even from day one. NEXIS was not widely available at Harvard, but it was crucial for the kind of work that got done at the Kennedy School. There was a fee for service. We paid by the minute, and while I was doing a search, I’d be very conscious of the clock ticking and how much it would cost. It was used by faculty or research assistants—people that had a budget. Students almost never used it.

The growth since is just mind-boggling. I mean, you start out with doing online searches in Dialog and end up where everybody has not just their own computer, not just a laptop, they have Blackberries, they can hook onto the web anytime, anyplace.

We used to be the gatekeepers. Librarians were the key to knowledge, the key to information. Now, students and faculty can get their own information, but they don’t necessarily realize that the information they’re
getting might not really be good information.

Today, a crucial part of our work is helping students to evaluate the information that they’re getting. Where is it coming from? Does the source of it have a vested interest in telling you a certain thing? Is it objective? Is it up to date? Who is the author? Of course, that’s always been the case in a way, but when you had a printed book or a journal, there was something, you could fairly safely assume somebody’s vetted this.

LN
The imprimatur is not the same online as it is in print.

EI
Absolutely not. Especially now, when people are getting so much information from the open web, because that’s easiest to find.

LN
Among the constellation of Harvard libraries, the HKS library is fairly small. What are the challenges of being a small library at Harvard?

EI
Well, first of all, it is a challenge to define your role. Why is the Kennedy School Library important when there is a Widener, and there is a major research library for every professional school? And what is the ideal content for a school of government? If we had unlimited collecting space and money, I’m not sure what the collection would be.

What we have tried to do is to make the library a place that really works for people, to define ourselves as user-friendly, with good customer service. And if there were problems, we were small enough so that I could know about them, and, if necessary, get involved in fixing them.

Another advantage we have in being small is flexibility and the opportunity to experiment. Staff members’ roles aren’t necessarily cast in stone. People get to work in various parts of the library and get involved in special projects depending on their skills and interests. And we were early adopters of various kinds of technology; for example, chat for reference, and blog software for a library online newsletter and a knowledge base for staff.

The Harvard Kennedy School is a small, defined community. We can help somebody at the reference desk in the morning and then see them in line at the cafeteria. It’s possible to interact with people on many levels.

LN
The library’s central location is a factor, too. And directly below the forum, which doubles as the cafeteria.

EI
People walk in and out all the time because it’s not a major trip. In between classes, students run down
to the library.

LN
What do you think is the greatest strength of the Harvard Kennedy School Library?

EI
The staff. We’ve really tried to hire people who have that attitude about wanting to make things work. Caring about the customers, the users. When there’s a problem, wanting to solve it. Reference people who really know what is available for the research interests of the school and make a point of making sure they know how to use it. Making a point of knowing who they’re dealing with and adding value whenever possible.

We don’t have a huge collection or a great space. The greatest strength of the HKS Library is the staff.