Chapter 01: A Family Tradition of Librarianship

Chapter 01: A Family Tradition of Librarianship

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Description

In this chapter, Ms. Hoffman sketches her family background and talks about the number of people in the family who have become librarians, beginning with her father, who headed the Saint Louis University Library. She tells several anecdotes to shed light on her own choice to enter library science.

Identifier

HoffmanKJ_01_20180319_C01

Publication Date

3-19-2018

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Personal Background; Personal Background; Influences from People and Life Experiences; Experiences Related to Gender, Race, Ethnicity; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents

Transcript

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

All right, and our counter is moving. Always a good sign. (laughs) And today is March 19th, 2018, and I am in my office, which also, happily, happens to be the Historical Resources Center Reading Room, in the Research Medical Library, in Pickens Tower, on the main campus of MD Anderson Cancer Center. And sitting with me today is Ms. Kathryn Hoffman, who likes to go by the name of Kathy, and I thank you for that. And she is here to talk about her role in the Research Medical Library. This interview is being conducted for the Making Cancer History Voices Oral History Project, run by the Research Medical Library. And—let’s see—the time is about 12 minutes after 1:00. And this is the first of a couple of planned interview sessions. So I want to thank you so much for agreeing to come in and talk—

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Oh, thank you.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

—about this home. (laughs)

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

It’s my pleasure to be here.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, I’m very excited. I’m a relative newcomer to the Library—2011 is when I started—so I thought, wow, here’s an opportunity to get some—

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

That was the year I retired. (laughs)

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

—get some of the deeper history. Absolutely. I mean, I think I just briefly met you when I came to meet Javier Garza—

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Right.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

—and Stephanie Fulton. So this will be a very interesting backward glance at the Research Medical Library.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

+ But I would like to start in kind of the traditional place, and ask you to tell me a little bit about, well, first, where you were born, and when, and tell me a little bit about your family.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Well, I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1948, November 1st. I am the eldest of four. I have three younger brothers. And my family moved to St. Louis when I was about two years old, and that’s really where I spent my formative years. They moved back to Ohio at the start of my senior year in high school, but I was in a private school, Catholic, all-girls Catholic school, and my father especially thought it was important that I finish there. And so they allowed me to stay behind, and I lived with a family that had six children—I made seven—and was able to finish high school with my class. It was a small class. We had about 145 girls in the class. And so that was very special, very special for me, to be able to finish at Nerinx. Nerinx Hall is the name of the high school.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Merricks Hall?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Nerinx.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Nerinx.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

N-E-R-I-N-X.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Now, was it important that it was an all-girls school? Do you feel that that was influential in any way in the education you received?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

I do, and I felt so strongly about that that I encouraged my two daughters to also attend a similar institution. They both went to St. Agnes Academy here in Houston. And I feel like it really helped empower women to be among all women. You didn’t have to be in competition with boys’ attention and anything like that. You could really excel in any way you wanted. And so I think that experience in an all-girls schools gave me that. And I feel like I did come out empowered, and kind of—I guess that’s kind of the way my career went. And I think I’m seeing the same thing in my daughters. In St. Louis, it was very—we had a lot of Catholic all-girl and all-boy schools, and so it was not uncommon to have that kind of education, if you were in—if you went into a private school.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Now, I know that education was really important in your family, and also you have kind of a family tradition of librarianship, so maybe you could talk a little bit about that, and when you became aware of that as an important thing in your own life.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Well, yeah, my father was a librarian. When we were in St. Louis, he was the director of St. Louis University Library, and then when we moved to Cleveland he became director at Case Western Reserve University. I really didn’t think about librarianship, but I started working in libraries when I was a junior in high school. I needed a job, a part-time job, just for some spending money, so I went to work at the public library when I was in high school, and then when I went to college I worked in the university library. So it came time. I was getting close to graduation, had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I’d been working in the library. And my supervisor had a conversation with me, and she said, “You’re kind of good at what you do here, and I think you enjoy it. Why—have you thought about maybe librarianship for your career?” And I thought, goodness. I’d never thought of it. So that night I went home—I was living at home, going to school—and I had a conversation with my father at the dinner table. That was always the family gathering place. And I told him I was thinking about maybe (watch dings) going into librarianship. And... Hold on, I’m going to—

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Sure.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

—going to silence this watch. And he was kind of dumbfounded. He had no idea. He was surprised. He says, “Are you really serious?” And I said, “Yes. Tell me more about this as a career for you, and if I decide to go to library school where should I go?” So he suggested three schools, and he ranked them for me, and the first choice was where I went. He said, “Knowing you as I do, and knowing the program at the University of Illinois, that’s where I suggest you go.” So I did. And he told me a few years later, he never thought I was really serious about it until I actually sent in my application. So I went off to library school in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and two things happened. I had always thought that I wanted to go into academic librarianship, but I had an advisor, Wilf Lancaster, who steered me toward medical libraries. And I also ran into a colleague of my father’s, who was a dear friend, who at that time was the director at the TMC Library, here in the Medical Center. We met in an ALA—that’s American Library Association—meeting, and we were having dinner, and he was telling me, “No, you don’t want to go into academic libraries. Medical is where it’s at.” So I had these two individuals in my life that were really pushing me that direction.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Very interesting. Let me interrupt you, because I’d like to capture a few details that are kind of a little bit further back in the past. So, first, what about your father’s name, and your mother’s name?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

My father was named James Victor Jones. My mother was Elizabeth Jean Jones. Sadly, my dad died at age 57 from esophageal cancer.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Oh, my.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Yeah. So we didn’t have a lot of time together to enjoy our shared profession, but we did attend the ALA meetings together. I had a couple of those with him, which was very special. And... I’m trying to think where I was going with this. (laughs) The tradition continues: my daughter, my youngest daughter, is also a librarian, and she’s doing really well. She just makes me so proud. I just... I see a lot of her—I mean, myself in her, the way she’s pursued her career, and what it means to her. So—

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

And her name?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Her name is Christina Gola, G-O-L-A. And so we get to share in that library experience. She’s in—she’s at the University of Houston. So she chose to go into academic libraries. But we attend the Texas Library Association meeting together every year, and it’s very special to have that to share with her. Very, very special.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Very interesting.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

So a couple—okay.

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Chapter 01: A Family Tradition of Librarianship

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