Don Langlois, recently retired history librarian, has handled all manner of questions about Arizona’s past.

Don Langlois liked his job as state history librarian so much, he whistled on his way to work.
“And on the way home,” he adds.
Langlois, 67, retired in December, but chances are he still whistles. He is just a naturally upbeat person. He can also speak volumes about Arizona history. As a librarian, whatever he didn’t know, he had at his fingertips.
He worked amid the 40,000-plus volumes of the Arizona Collection, housed above the third floor of the 1938 Capitol Addition. Getting there means taking a long, narrow staircase to a landing that overlooks the genealogy library. The interior walls have a hardwood finish from an earlier time.
The librarian’s desk takes up one corner. The main history collection is housed nearby behind a locked door, inside a dimly lit warren of shelves. Administratively, the collection is part of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.
For 10 years, it was under the direct care of Langlois. He first hired on with Library and Archives as a law librarian — one flight down — in 1990. 
When he took over the Arizona collection, agency officials anticipated getting a new history and archives building. They were running out of a space, and what space they had was poorly suited to housing historical documents. But the Legislature kept kicking the funding down the road, until a 2006 appropriation.
Construction of the new Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building is expected to be completed by early summer. It could be open by fall, though no firm date has been set.
Langlois is philosophical about not being part of a move long-planned.
“I sort of ended up at the same place I began,” he says. “We all kept getting older in the meantime.”
Perhaps this a good place for full disclosure: When the Arizona Capitol Times staff needed a bit of background on Arizona history, Langlois was the go-to guy. He’d pull out a file of newspaper clippings on such matters as Arizona’s governor’s mansions. There isn’t a governor’s mansion now, but Gov. Raul Castro (1975-77) briefly lived in what passed for one in Paradise Valley.
Along with reporters, other inquiring minds regularly called and e-mailed Langlois for the inside dope on Arizona history. His predecessors, he says, tipped him off on what to expect — such as requests for maps to undiscovered gold mines.
“I first thought people were kidding,” Langlois says. “And then somebody asked me if I had a map of the undiscovered turquoise deposits. I said, ‘Well, they haven’t been discovered yet.’ “
If the question had an answer, however, Langlois would find it.
It was a learning experience for him, as well as the public. He was surprised to find how many people had a connection to Arizona. Airport-namesake New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia spent time in the state as a boy, Langlois says.
“His father was the band director at Fort Huachuca,.” Langlois says.
Then there’s Edgar Rice Burroughs of Tarzan fame.
“He spent about two years in the cavalry here in Arizona, so he wrote four books that had to do with Arizona — two on cowboys and two on Indians,” Langlois says.
In retirement, Langlois plans to catch up on all the reading he had put off, as well as travel with his wife, Ullrike. He’ll also have more time to work on sermons and celebrate the Eucharist. Langlois is an Episcopal priest, a calling he took up before becoming a librarian.
What he’ll miss most at the library, he says, are people he worked with.
The library, in turn, will miss his institutional knowledge, through Ellen Greene is working to fill the void.
Greene, 38, is his replacement. To help her get started, she says, Langlois “pointed out a lot of topics and books to read up on.”
Still, there’s no predicting what slice of Arizona history somebody will ask about, though hunting for the answer is a surefire way to learn the ropes.
“The collection is so unique, you really don’t know what’s there until you start digging it up,” she says. “Sometimes the answers you need are not really where you expect them.”
One person wanted to know where the 10th Cavalry was stationed in 1886.
“It took me about 10 different books to find it,” Greene says.
As with much of Arizona history, there was no pat answer. The 10th Cavalry was split up and spread out across the state, though most of its soldiers stayed at Camp Verde, she says.
Greene already knows a lot about Arizona. She grew up in Phoenix and took car trips across state with her family. Later, as the wife of an U.S. Air Force sergeant, Greene traveled the country.
During that time, she also taught junior high school. She recently moved back to Phoenix. Her husband, soon to retire, will follow.
Now a librarian, Greene faces another big move this summer – from the old Capitol complex to the new archives and history building on 19th Avenue south of Jefferson. To prepare, Greene will have to size up the collection, literally.
“We have to measure the books to make sure we have enough shelf space,” Green says.