Chapter 02 : Education and Activities Reflect a Broad Perspective

Chapter 02 : Education and Activities Reflect a Broad Perspective

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Description

In this chapter, Ms. Hoffman talks about the range of strengths and interests that emerged during her youth: a gift for mathematics, a love of reading, interest in music and sewing. She talks about her choice of undergraduate institution, Case Western Reserve University (B.A., 1971). For graduate school, she elected to go to the University of Illinois (M.S.L.S., 1973) because they has a program in biomedical librarianship.

Identifier

HoffmanKJ_01_20180319_C02

Publication Date

3-19-2018

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Educational Path; Personal Background; Influences from People and Life Experiences; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents

Transcript

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah, I just wanted to ask you a little bit about kind of earlier education. Because one of the things I like to do in these interviews is get a sense of how a person’s sense of interest, and even some of their talents, their abilities that maybe they took for granted when they were younger but then suddenly become important later on, how does those start to emerge. So when you were going through school, what were some of the subjects that really intrigued you, and what did you find that you were exceling at?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Hmm. In high school, I was a whiz at math. Today, I can hardly do fractions. I mean, I don’t know what happened. But I enjoyed math so much, I used to have to save my homework for the end, because I would sit and do extra work, extra work, and never get to anything else. But math, it turned out, was not my forte. I didn’t—I excelled at it in high school and really enjoyed it, but then it kind of stopped there for some reason.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

What kind of math? Was it algebra? Geometry?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

All of those.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

All of them. Wow, that’s neat. Did you take calculus?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

I did.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah, so it was a whole thing.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Yeah, and it came to me very naturally, for whatever reason.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah, are you a visual thinker? Did you kind of visualize that?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Yes. Yes, I am visual.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah. Because I’m wondering—that could go in with data, manipulating large amounts of data and sort of visualizing systems.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Okay. And I started off as a cataloguer in librarianship, so that kind of makes sense.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah, there you go. What were some of the other things that you really enjoyed?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

One of the things I really, really enjoyed, and I think made a difference in my life, was something in high school they called the Directed Reading Program. In addition to English classes, we had a different novel every month that the whole class read together, and then we had two days devoted to discussion on that novel. And I think that really turned me into a lifelong reader, and I loved reading. I still read a lot, although I’ve found that when I was kind of at the peak of my career, reading went by the wayside, leisure reading. So after retiring, I’ve had the opportunity to really just devour one book after another.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

That’s pretty great.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

So... And I think that experience at Nerinx really made a big difference. And, interesting enough, I just attended my fiftieth reunion this past fall, and we have started writing our histories, each of us. We’ve contributed to our stories. And one of the discussions we’ve been having lately was about this directed reading program, and what were the titles we read, and they were incredible books that most high schoolers do not read. So it was very special, and I think that made a real difference for me.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Did you participate in sports, or clubs, or anything? I’m thinking about kind of the leadership impulse. Where might that have taken root in your earlier education?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

I didn’t participate in sports. I did as a youngster—I played softball—but that really wasn’t my strength. I was a musician. I played the piano, and started when I was ten years old. And we didn’t have a piano. I remember coming home from school. The music teacher had come to our class—I was in fourth grade—and she said, “Now, you don’t have to have a piano. You can take lessons and practice at school.” So I went home very excited, told my parents, “Now, I really, really want to take piano lessons. We don’t have to get a piano. I can practice at school.” So they agreed. I did that all the way through eighth grade. I stayed after school for at least 30 minutes every day and just played the piano. And when I went to high school, I continued lessons. We had a fabulous music teacher at Nerinx that I studied with. And I was active in the glee club, and sang, but also did a lot of the accompanying when we performed. So music was a very big part of my life. It was also part of my parents’ life. My dad played the clarinet and the saxophone, so it wasn’t unusual to have music be something in common. My parents loved to dance. They loved big swing music, and we always had music in the house, so... But I pursued classical music, which they weren’t quite sure where that came from, because that wasn’t what happened in our house. But maybe it was Mrs. Burgett from high school that was that influence for me. So music was a very big part of me. The other thing I did, I was very interested in sewing. My mother didn’t do any of these things. (laughs) She was a lovely, lovely woman, but she didn’t really cook, and she didn’t sew. She didn’t do any of those domestic things. She just liked to party and have fun. So it turned out the woman that lived next door to us in St. Louis was a beautiful seamstress, and everything I learned about sewing I learned from her. So I used to make my own clothes. I’d made my daughter’s clothes. And then, like reading, it sort of fell by the wayside as I got busier and busier in my profession, until I retired. And now I’ve taken up quilting, and I’m just having a ball being back at a sewing machine again.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, I’m really struck, because some of the things that you’ve mentioned, they all take a lot of precision and focus. Singing is like that. Math is like that. Sewing is like that. (laughs) Piano is certainly like that. And working with cataloguing and details in a library are certainly like that. So it’s kind of—it’s a very interesting group of things that are coming together for you. Yeah.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

I’d never thought about it that way.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

That’s very neat. Well, you were starting to tell the story about going to I think it was the University of Illinois?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Right, that’s where I went for library school.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah. And, now, is that where you went undergraduate?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

No, I went to Case Western Reserve University.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay, okay. So tell me about the decision to go to Case Western.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

When I moved back home, after graduating from high school, my father strongly encouraged me—he didn’t require it, but he strongly encouraged me—to live at home for at least one year and go to Case Western Reserve, because he wanted me to have a sense of home and family, and having not made that move with the family, he was—really felt that that was important. As it turned out, I went all four years to Case, and lived at home the whole time, and it was okay. I mean, it was—I don’t know—

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

It sounds like you’re close with your family.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Yes, very close.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So what was your major? (laughter) How did you kind of develop? And what year was this?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Let me think. I graduated from high school in 1967, and graduated from college in 19—

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Seventy-one.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

Seventy-one, yeah, thank you.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

And Bachelor of Arts.

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

I’m fuzzy on dates. And then ’73 for my graduate degree. So my major was in history and philosophy. Kind of a strange background to go into medical libraries, I guess, but when I had that meeting with [Sam Hitt?], that I told you was influential in my decision to go into medical libraries, one of the things he told me, he says, “Don’t worry. I can teach you.” That was his approach. “I can teach you.” And so after that meeting, that dinner meeting with him, he told me to go back to Illinois and think about it, and if I was interested, give him a call. So I did. I thought, well, what have I got to lose? The next thing I knew, I was stepping off a plane in Houston in February with wool clothes on, and it was hot. (laughs) I had left an ice storm in Illinois to come to a very nice climate in Houston. So next thing I knew I was working at the Texas Medical Center Library.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Right. Well, tell me about the master’s program at the University of Illinois. I mean, what—how did you feel...? I don’t know anything about a program in librarianship, and there may be people who listen to this who don’t either. (laughter) So how did you ramp up into this new field from history and philosophy?

Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:

I don’t know that I’d call it a ramping up. A lot of what is taught in library school—there’s a lot of history, history of the profession, but then there are classes that teach you about, well, cataloguing, the ins and outs of how to catalog, classes that teach you about reference books, the different sources, resources that you would be using at a library. There were management classes, budgeting classes. What else? The one unique thing about the University of Illinois is it had a biomedical program. Back then, the National Library of Medicine had a handful of these programs in different schools throughout the country, and U of I was one of them. And Wilf Lancaster, the professor I told you was very influential in my decision to go this direction, headed that program. So they—we had, I think, when I was there, we had, like, five students who were part of that program. They had a special scholarship that was funded by the National Library of Medicine to go through this program. So the emphasis for them in going through the library school program was to take classes in information management, the different things that were focused more toward medical libraries. I can’t even remember what they all are now. And I pursued that same course of study, even though I wasn’t one of the individuals going through on the scholarship. So...

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