Christina Rice

Christina Rice is Senior Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library's Photo Collection, a three-million-image archive she has overseen since 2009, and the author of two Hollywood biographies published by the University Press of Kentucky.

Based in Los Angeles, CA Org Los Angeles Public Library Role Senior Librarian, Photo Collection

Notable work and positions

Los Angeles Public Library — Senior Librarian, Photo Collection (since 2009)
Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel (2013) — Author
Mean…Moody…Magnificent! Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend (2021) — Author
Los Angeles Central Library POPS: Celebrating a Century of the Light of Learning — Author

Biography

Christina Rice has worked for the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) since 2005 and has served as Senior Librarian of its Photo Collection since 2009. In that role, based at Central Library, she oversees a collection of more than three million images documenting Southern California from the 1850s to the present, managing preservation and organization of the collection, selecting images for the library's online photo database, coordinating digitization workflows, supervising a staff of five permanent employees along with interns, volunteers and grant-funded employees, and pursuing grant funding for the collection. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University, completed in 2004.

While majoring in film at California State University, Fullerton in the 1990s, Rice began collecting memorabilia related to actress Ann Dvorak, research that led her to launch the website AnnDvorak.com and eventually to write her first book, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel, published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2013. She followed it with a second Hollywood biography from the same press, Mean…Moody…Magnificent! Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend, in 2021. She also wrote Los Angeles Central Library POPS: Celebrating a Century of the Light of Learning, an illustrated children's book about Central Library's history, and has written numerous issues of the My Little Pony comic book series for IDW Publishing, contributed to the Eisner-nominated comics anthologies Femme Magnifique (2018) and Where We Live (2018), and edited books for Photo Friends Publications in support of LAPL.

Rice regularly writes historical articles for LAPL's own news and blog pages on subjects including Los Angeles during the civil rights era, the library's 1986 Central Library fire, and figures from the city's photographic and cultural history, drawing on the Photo Collection she oversees. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, writer Joshua Hale Fialkov, and their daughter.

Career highlights

1. Senior Librarian, LAPL Photo Collection, since 2009Oversees a collection of more than 3 million historical images of Southern California, supervising a staff of five permanent employees plus interns, volunteers and grant-funded staff.

2. Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel, 2013Her first book, growing out of more than a decade of independent research into the largely forgotten 1930s film actress.

3. Mean…Moody…Magnificent!, 2021A second Hollywood biography, of actress Jane Russell, from the University Press of Kentucky.