Since January 2017, Kazuko Hioki serves as the Head of Preservation at the University of Hawaii Manoa Library. Previously, she has worked as the Conservation Librarian and Asian Studies Liaison Librarian at the University of Kentucky Libraries, served as an assistant conservator at the New York Public Library, and was a preventive conservation fellow at the Library of Congress. She is a recipient of the 2012 FAIC/Samuel H. Kress Conservation Publication Fellowship, and she is at work on a manuscript entitled Printed Books as Artifacts from Japan of the Edo Period (1603-1867). She has lectured at various institutions nationally and internationally on topics of conservation and preservation for libraries and archives.

She received her Bachelor of Agriculture in Pesticide Chemistry from Kobe University, Japan, and worked for the Sumitomo Chemical Company as a scientific information specialist. She earned an M.I.L.S. with the Certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from the University of Texas at Austin.