Written By: Michelle Sosa
Edited By: Adina Vega and Genevieve Hammang
Image of the main library branch in downtown Long Beach, California
Located in sunny Southern California, the Long Beach Public Library (LBPL) system provides twelve library branches to the residents of the city of Long Beach and surrounding areas. The library houses a vast collection of resources, including but not limited to makerspaces, digital resources, print books, family learning centers, and others. Among these resources available to the public are the unique Long Beach historical collections and archives. While some physical collections are available to view by appointment, many items have been digitized and are accessible from anywhere. LBPL’s special collections librarian, Jeff Whalen, was gracious enough to accept our invitation to interview him as he holds a unique position in a public library. Please enjoy his interview!
Jeff Whalen in the Miller Room at the Billie Jean King Main Library Branch
- What is your name, title, and place of employment, and how long have you worked there? What do you enjoy most about your position?
My name is Jeff Whalen, and I am the Special Collections Librarian at the Billie Jean King Main Library here in sunny California. I’ve worked at Long Beach Public Library since 2018 and have been in Special Collections since 2020. I enjoy a bunch of different things about the job, but my favorite is the research.
- Where did you go to school? Did you have a specific focus during your MLIS program?
I went to UCLA. At first, I didn’t really know what I was doing or what classes to take, so I enrolled in a YA Lit class because it seemed like we’d just read books and talk about them. Which seemed very reasonable, as opposed to “Information Structures” or whatever the other options were. I ended up really enjoying the class and that group of students and professors, so I decided to focus on Teen librarianship. I couldn’t get a Teen gig out of library school, so I became a general reference librarian.
- What does a typical day look like for you? Is there a special project that you are currently working on?
Most local history questions get sent to me, whether by email, phone, or in person, to the tune of probably four or five a day. I connect patrons with the proper resources or find the answers for them, depending on the patrons’ ability to access the resources.
I often get research requests from various city departments that I’m encouraged to handle as quickly as possible.
I usually have a few hours on the desk in the Miller Room, which is the library’s quiet study/local history/Special Collections/art reference room. It’s a fairly low-action room in a busy downtown public library. Sometimes we get a lot of walk-ins, sometimes not so much.
I have a local history podcast that is fun to do and helps us—hopefully—connect patrons with the city’s forgotten, secret, or weird past. We’re currently on hiatus and looking forward to season three!
And there’s always the ever-present never-ending permanent projects, such as the Digital Photo Archive, where I can always be digitizing and adding photos and improving existing metadata as we go along. Other similar projects are our map digitization project, processing donations, digitizing old audio, etc.
- How does your position work in a public library setting? Do you have a favorite item from the collection you manage?
Patrons get sent to me after first talking or emailing or whatnot with a library staffer who then directs anything local history my way. My title is Special Collections librarian, but I’m often referred to as the Local History librarian for simplicity’s sake.
Almost all of the “Special Collections,” especially the ones patrons ask about, relate to local history. We have a sizable collection of petroleum industry journals and books from the first half of the 20th century, which are somewhat relevant to Long Beach’s “local history,” but they’re mostly technical and usually not specifically about Long Beach. We only get a few questions a year about this collection and almost always from visiting grad students.
The Petroleum Collection, as it’s called, remains the most mysterious of our collections, since I have so little call to find things in it. Pro tip: the quickest way to learn about your collection is to have patrons ask lots of questions.
And patrons usually want yearbooks, old newspapers, info about their house, info about their grandma who lived here in the 1960s, stuff like that. They usually just want to be pointed in the right direction or just need a little help, but I’m glad our department is here since the resources, both physical and digital, can be a little daunting for first-timers.
I don’t know if this is an “item” or not, but my favorite, without question, is our old newspapers. When we got those digitized in 2020, researching became way easier and super-way more fun. Looking through old newspapers is one of my favorite things to do! Those old-timey people—so different, so exactly the same!
- What was one of the most exciting pieces of history you’ve been able to handle and research?
One of my favorites was researching a double murder from 1924 for the podcast. It was an interesting case involving dead rich people and oil money, but for whatever reason, it never really got talked about after the trial. No books, no movies starring Bill Pullman, no award-winning docuseries on Starz, nothing like that. The police had the guy cold, but the prosecutors put up a real wobbly case, and he got away with it and was found not guilty. After researching, I decided the only logical conclusion was that the DA (who later went to prison for taking bribes from a rich guy conman tangentially involved in this case) had taken a bribe to throw the case.
- Why do you think special libraries are essential to the library world?
Probably for all the reasons! Focused collections and knowledgeable staff, people with experience about what patrons want and what’s important to preserve and make available. Like, I wouldn’t want to provide library reference service to a patron who needs an experienced law librarian. There are people who are way more qualified to do that. For certain things, you really need knowledgeable people with good tools.
- What has been one of the most memorable patron reference interactions?
Helping a woman try to piece together events from her chaotic childhood in Long Beach in the 1970s. It was emotional and really had an effect on me. I was thankful we could help provide some answers for her.
- What are your favorite genres to read? Do you have a favorite book?
I used to read only mysteries. For a while, I only read Teen books. Now I pretty much only read books about rock music. My favorite mystery is Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, my favorite Teen book is Feed by M.T. Anderson, my favorite rock book is Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group by Ian F. Svenonius.
Please visit its website here for more information about Long Beach Public Library’s special collections. Additionally, if you are interested in tuning in to Jeff’s history podcast titled Don’t Know Beach About History: Short Histories of Long Beach, you can find it here.
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