Chapter 13: An Interest in Teaching and Work with Professional Associations
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Description
In this chapter, Ms. Hoffman talks about the pleasure she took in teaching and describes the intensive courses she taught all around the world on MeSH and the NLMC classification systems. She also discusses the importance of her work with associations and talks about some of her ongoing, post-retirement activity with them.
She then talks about retirement, noting why many people are afraid to retire. She discusses her involvement in the MD Anderson Retirees Association and comments on the continuing relevance of libraries and librarians.
After closing the interview, she adds a story of working with Dr. Peter Pisters on a research project. Dr. Pisters was selected to be MD Anderson’s new president after Dr. Ronald DePinho’s resignation.
Identifier
HoffmanKJ_02_20180326_C013
Publication Date
3-27-2018
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS, Oral History Interview, March 27, 2018
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional Service beyond MD Anderson; Leadership; On Leadership; The Mentor; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Professional Practice; The Professional at Work; Post-Retirement Activities
Transcript
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Tough time. Yeah, yeah. I had a few other questions I wanted to ask you. About the publications, because you have quite a long publication record, and I was curious: I didn’t realize—was it—is it unusual for people in librarian positions to take an active interest in publication, or is that...?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I don’t think so.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, I kind of wondered about that, because you have a strong sense of service to your field, and outward-reaching, and so that comes from that place?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Right.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, interesting. So tell me a little bit about that desire. And also, it probably dovetails nicely with teaching, which you said you also wanted to talk about.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Oh, yeah. Actually, I think my teaching record is more interesting than my publications. (laughs)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Wherever you would like to go. If you’d like to talk about teaching, please do.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I got involved in teaching very early on, which was, I found, kind of ironic for myself, because when I was getting ready to graduate from college, I had no desire whatsoever to teach. I just—that was not what I wanted to do. But early on in my career, I started teaching continuing education for the Medical Library Association, and I was filling a real need. I taught cataloguing—MeSH and NLM Classification was the name of the CE class—and I think I told you when I first interviewed at the TMC library I was going there as a cataloguer, and the head of cataloguing said, “Well, are you familiar with MeSH, Medical Subject Headings?” “No...” “Are you familiar with the National Library of Medicine Classification system?” “No...” And the reason was it was not taught in library school. I don’t think it still is to this day. So I was able to provide this voice for librarians, whether they be a recent graduate or someone who’d been out in the field for a while. They didn’t have any training in the use of MeSH or the NLM Classification system. And I taught an eight-hour class that took me on the road, all around the country—in fact, all around the world. I had the good fortune to be invited to the International Conference of Medical Librarians in Japan, and I taught that eight-hour class there to a very international group of students. I also went to Italy, to Bologna, and taught it at the International Congress of Librarians. But mostly, I traveled around to very small towns in the United States, where regional library meetings were held in the spring and the fall. There was nothing glamorous about it. I would travel all day to this little town, get there late in the day, have dinner, get up early the next day, teach all day, then fly home and drag in at, like, ten, eleven o’clock at night, and go to work the next day. But I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed that teaching experience.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Why?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I don’t know. I was good at it. I was very good at it. And I just enjoyed imparting that new knowledge to people. Then, along the way, cataloguing had a new set of rules that came out. It was called AACR2, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition. So for all the many cataloguers who’d been working for years, this was a new cataloguing code. So I developed another class that I taught for the Medical Library Association, and there was another group I taught that for, too, when it first came out. So I did a lot of teaching of cataloguing to librarians. I also did a lot of teaching at the University of North Texas Library School. I was on the adjunct faculty there, and I taught a class on library information management. And this was a class that I cotaught. I started it with my associate director, Marty Adamson, when I was working at UT Southwestern. And we cotaught it together, which was a lot of fun. As my associate director, just like Stephanie, Marty’s knowledge and skills complemented mine. We were very different individuals. So teaching that class, the same kind of thing came out, where we were pulling on our particular strengths, each of us, with the topics that we taught in that class.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I think that can be really fun for the attendees to a class, because they really see information—an information tag team, almost, and it’s very exciting, and it’s like, wow, yeah. It’s a demonstration of different perspectives.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
And we provided real-life kind of situation type study. But it was fun. I really, really enjoyed teaching a lot, and I did it for a number of years. Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, tell me about—you mentioned that you’ve continued to participate in various associations, and tell me a little bit about why and what that’s been like.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I am still a member—I’m a life member—of the Medical Library Association, and also the American Library Association. But I don’t really do too much with those two organizations. The one I’m most involved with today is the Texas Library Association. It’s closer to home. I didn’t really get involved in—and I’ll just refer to it as TLA, the Texas Library Association—until I was much later in my career. I always thought—I was snobbish—I always thought it was, oh, that’s just school librarians. That’s not for medical librarians. So I focused all of my energies in the Medical Library Association. Well, I found out that really wasn’t the case. The Texas Library Association is the largest state library association in the country. It has between seven and nine thousand members. It’s very large, and its annual conference every year is very large. And I got involved—I can’t remember when I actually got involved with that organization, but I dove right in and was on several committees. I was a chair of committees. And after I retired, I continued to be involved in the Association. I retired from my job, not my profession, and this keeps me connected to my profession. One of the things that it offered me was friendships, associations with not just medical librarians but academic, public, school. And I was just really—I’ve been really excited to be able to move into new circles of librarians that I hadn’t experienced before. I’ve just really enjoyed it immensely. So what I’m currently doing—well, let me go back. When I first retired from MD Anderson, TLA asked me to chair their strategic planning. They redo their strategic plan every three years, and it was time. So I agreed to do that on the provision I could have a co-chair. And so I asked an individual who worked for me at UT Southwestern [Richard Wayne], whose forte was really strategic planning—mine’s more facilitation, I think, but he was a great strategic planner. So we did it together. And—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
His name?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I’m going to... This is terrible.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s okay. Like I said, we can put it in later. Not to worry.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Okay. I’m blanking here. So we did this whole strategic plan that really was, I think, a very visionary plan. It was something brand new, unlike anything they’d had before. And it got a lot of compliments because of that. They really—people liked it a lot. And I’m happy to say they’ve now done another revision, but they’ve kept the format we put in place, and built on that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Is that something you could share with me, or is that a private document for the organization?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
No, I could do that. I’ll get that for you.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That would be great. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what were some of the things that made it so unusual and so successful?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I think because, first of all, we developed our big, outrageous goal, something really visionary.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Which was?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Well, I’ll have to paraphrase, and I’ll have to go back and double-check it. (laughter)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s okay.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
But it was that every Texan would understand the value libraries bring to their life, to paraphrase. But I’ll go back and get that. And then we focused on just four critical areas of focus—and that’s not the words we used, but basically that’s what it was—and then developed some specific objectives, or goals, within those four broad areas. And it just worked. We also revisited our core values, and there was a lot of discussion on what’s a core value, what’s not a core value, and dah-dah-dah. Anyway, I’ll get the document for you. I haven’t looked at it in over ten years, so it’s—I’m rusty. But I did that when I first retired, and I realize it—it was like an 18-month process. By the end of the process, it was too much like work. I didn’t need that. I was ready to retire. There were other things I wanted to do with my time. But nonetheless, I still stayed connected with TLA. I’m currently chair of the Larson Grant, Mystery Grant. What this is, an individual set up an endowment for public libraries to request grant money to develop their mystery collections. It’s not a lot of money: $500 every year is awarded. So the grant is not to exceed three pages in length. We had, I think, 21 applications this year. One of the things I did that I feel—that I’m proud of—is I brought to the process things I learned from grants and grant-writing from the scientific field. So as a member of that committee—I’ve been on this committee now for five years; I’m chairing it this year—I really helped bring that expertise I had from my scientific work environment to help them develop a scoring rubric and whole process for scoring the grants and making the award. So that’s what I’m active in. I will stay on one more year, I told them just this last week, so I could help the new chair transition into this new scoring rubric and process that we set up. The other thing I’m chair of is the Retired Librarians Round Table. Our mantra—we have a mantra—is that we have knowledge and experience to share. And so I’m working with a board—a chair, past chair, chair-elect, secretary, treasurer, we have a webmaster—to do things. Basically, a lot of what we do is help individuals transition from the workplace to retirement. This is very difficult for a lot of people. They don’t know what they’re going to do. So many people hang on. Do we need to stop?
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
No, no, I’m just—I’m...
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Okay. So many people are afraid to retire because they don’t know what they’re going to do for friends. Their whole world revolves around the workplace and the individuals they know in the workplace, and they don’t have outside interests; they don’t have friends outside that circle. Some individuals haven’t prepared financially, and so we do things to—we offer programs at the annual conference that address some of these things. So we’ve done a lot and had a lot of fun with it. I’m going to moderate a panel at the meeting, which is just next week. We have a panel of three librarians, one from academic libraries, one from public, and one from school, and the academic is actually an academic medical librarian, a colleague of mine who retired from UT Southwestern. Anyway, we’re going to have a panel that addresses some of these fears and questions that people have, that they’re contemplating retirement but they’re afraid, “Oh, what will I do for friends?”
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And sometimes “Who am I?”
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Yeah. So I’m looking forward to that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s a real service to people.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Yeah. So it’s been fun. It keeps me connected, and it also provides an opportunity for me to do things with my daughter, who is a librarian. So we go together, and just have fun at conference. So I can attend the conference and not feel like I have to be there learning things that I’m taking back to the library, to—that I need to implement this or that. I can just go and enjoy listening to authors speak, or one of my favorite things is to attend sessions geared to children’s books that I can take back to my grandchildren. So I have a whole new perspective in approaching my attendance at annual conference.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
[01:14:14 Do you have any different realizations? Because you’ve been retired now for a number of years, and that’s a period of reflection, about your career and what you accomplished and who you were as a leader at various institutions. And I’m wondering—and also about librarianship. And I’m wondering: what are some of the thoughts that you’ve had as you’ve kind of looked back and evaluated where you’ve been?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Well, I’m still involved as a librarian, I guess, with the MD Anderson Retirees Association. I don’t know that this is on my CV, so you wouldn’t have known this. The Retirees Association, I think, started about 25 years ago. It’s not a huge organization, and it’s made up of mainly administrative staff and nursing staff members. That’s kind of the primary workup. It’s primarily women; very few men are in the group. But Micha Gregory, who worked in the President’s Office, and Linda Korb, who worked in Development, are both members, very active. And we all retired about the same time. And we joined the Retirees together. And Linda has been chair, and when she was chair she realized the importance of documenting the history of the group, and she asked me to be the archivist.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
So I served that role, and serve on the board of the Retirees Association as their archivist. I’ve gathered a lot of the materials. I haven’t turned it over to Javier yet, but I’m going to. I’ve also scanned a lot of the documents, and so I’m still gathering and organizing so I know what we have, and then I’ll give it to Javier to officially take over the records for us. And that’s been kind of fun, so I’m continuing to dabble in library work that way. But the other interesting thing is just recently we’ve got a new representative from the HR Department that is the liaison to the retirees group, and she wanted to know more of the history. How did it get started? What can you tell me about it? And we’re about to celebrate our twenty-fifth year. So Linda Korb contacted me a few weeks ago and said, “Do you have anything in the archive of our materials? Was there a letter to—from Dr. LeMaistre establishing the group? Does it have a charter? Bylaws? We need to... Our PR rep—HR rep, I’m sorry—HR rep wants to know more about it.” So I had a few documents, but then I contacted Javier to see what he might have. Well, he had it. He had, I think, a speech that Dr. LeMaistre gave that documented the establishment of this group, and so together with what I had in my little archive collection and what he had, we were able to provide this history of who we are.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Thank goodness for those presidential papers, and for—
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Yes! It’s like, wow. So I think I didn’t really answer your question there, did I? (laughter)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
But you told me something that was obviously on your mind!
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I just told you another story!
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
No, I mean, that’s—
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
That just snuck in there.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, it did. Well, it brings together your original interest in history, your commitment to creating—
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Yeah, it’s kind of coming back around.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
—yeah—commitment to creating a historical archive in MD Anderson, and then how that continues to be used and imparted. I mean, it is interesting. I mean, there is so much discussion now in the literature of organizations about how understanding organizational history, understanding the history of an organization’s culture is so important for making decisions that inform the future. All sorts of things can’t happen without it. And so yeah, I mean, when you and Steve Tomasovic and the others sat down to talk—it was Steve Stuyck—sat down to talk about the HRC, you may not have been able to articulate why it was important, but you knew it was.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Right.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
You had that intuition, and sure enough, (laughs) it’s borne out. I mean, that was really an internal compass that was pointing the right direction. Yeah, very cool. If you want to answer my other question, that’s fine. (laughter)
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I don’t even remember what it was now!
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Which is if you had any kind of statements to make, things that you’ve—I mean, more of a philosophical nature, if you will, about librarianship. If not, that’s fine.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Librarianship is not dead. Is that a philosophical statement?
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure, why not? (laughter)
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
So many people think, oh, everything’s on the internet, you don’t need a library. Yeah, you do. And whether it be a school library—elementary school, high school, college—the library plays a critical role in education. Moving on beyond that, look at MD Anderson. Library plays a critical role in research, in all four of those areas of the mission of the institution: the patient care; the research; education; prevention. Libraries play a role, and I think they always will.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What is the role that librarians play?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Their role is in being the bridge between the need and obtaining the information, I think, I would say.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
They’re really needed, too, especially when information has—the volume of it has expanded.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Right, the volume. I remember my daughter told me she decided she would go into librarianship, and what she was very passionate about was she wanted to teach college students how to do good research. And so her first positions were in the education area of the library, and teaching students how to do good research.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, such a fundamental skill in life, teaches the mind to be sharp and objective, and... Yeah. How cool. Is there anything else you would like to add about all these—this experience?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I don’t—I can’t think of anything. I might later. I’ve been going off on different tangents. (laughs)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
No, no, that’s fine. Well, it’s really been a pleasure to talk to you.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Well, thank you. It’s been really a pleasure for me, too.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, nice. I’ve learned a lot about this place where I’ve been since 2011, (laughs) so yeah, it’s been really, really great. Well, if there’s nothing else that you would like to add.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
No.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
We’re good, okay. I will just say for the record that I am turning off the recorder at 11:42. (Break in audio)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, we have an appendix on a publication here. (laughter)
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Okay, you –earlier you said—you mentioned that I have a long list of publications, and you were kind of intrigued by that. Mostly, what I wrote about were things that pertain to what I was doing in libraries, but one publication that I just wanted to mention, in light of the new leadership at MD Anderson, happened back in I think it was late 1997, because the publication came out in ’98. Dr. Pisters, the new president, approached me. He came to the library. He was writing a chapter in a book, and he asked if I would cowrite it with him. And it was titled “Computer-Based Literature Searches,” and it was published in a book called Surgical Research: Basic Principles in Clinical Practice. It was a third edition. Literature searching was not my forte, and I told him, I said, “I don’t really think I’m the best person to coauthor this with you,” but he insisted. And I said, “No, no, no, no, I have librarians who do this. Like, this is their strength; it’s not mine.” He says, “No, no, no, no, I want you to do it.” So I did. And so we coauthored this chapter in the book. And I felt way outside my element, because it was not my area of expertise by any means. I did a lot of consulting with the librarians on staff who did do online searching, so really their names should’ve been on the title of this, but they weren’t.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Who were they?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I don’t remember now exactly who I consulted. That was back in the late ’90s, I guess; ’97, I think it was, but anyway.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Why do you think he was so insistent that he wanted you to help him with this article?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Because I think he understood that’s what libraries did, and that’s where that expertise was.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Very interesting, yeah.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
And he wanted the director.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, of course, yeah. And that makes a difference. It does make a difference.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
And he was very proud of the fact that (laughs) we never had to meet face-to-face to write this. We did it all electronically.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, how cool. Did he mention that in a footnote, at least? Did you guys mention that in your article?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I don’t remember. I don’t think so.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That would be a cool detail.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
But he had a lot of online resources in the chapter, I recall. I haven’t looked at it in a really long time. We should go pull the book off the shelf and see.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
We should.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
If it’s still there. (laughs)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
If it’s still there, really. What did you think of him? I mean, since he’s going to step into the presidency role.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I was really, really pleased to see him come back. I know he was very well-respected, and I think he’s a very, very good choice, so I’m really excited that he’s the new president.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What do you see as his specific skill areas? Or why is he an appropriate choice at this time?
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Ooh, that I really can’t say, because I really never worked with him directly. I only just worked with him on that little chapter. So I don’t know that it... I’d probably be making things up.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. I just wondered if you knew anything of his reputation.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
No.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
I knew it was a good reputation. I know that people were sad when he left, but I didn’t really know specifics. But I know that people are happy that he’s back.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I think that’s pretty neat that you had the opportunity to work with him. Interesting.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
In a small, small way.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, that was our appendix, and I think it was worth putting on the book. (laughter) All right. Well, so now I’m—we’re finishing up at 11:47. Thanks.
Kathryn Jones Hoffman, MSLS:
Okay.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That was a good story.
Recommended Citation
Hoffman, Kathryn Jones MSLS and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 13: An Interest in Teaching and Work with Professional Associations" (2018). Interview Chapters. 1074.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1074
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