After a brief year in St. Louis, Joeckel travelled to the West Coast in 1911 to take on the job of Assistant Reference Librarian (1911–1912) and later Superintendent of Circulation (1912–1914) at the University of California, Berkeley Library.

[4] During his tenure at the Berkeley Public Library, book circulation "more than tripled" and three additional branches were built.

[4] Joeckel taught Public Library Administration at what was then the undergraduate Department of Library Science in UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Science;[5] this evolved into the graduate School of Librarianship in 1926, now known as the UC Berkeley School of Information.

[10] Joeckel simultaneously pursued additional studies at the University and received his Master's of Arts in Political Science in 1928.

[9] This seminal work was honored with the ALA's James Terry White Award for "exemplary writing" in 1938.

Joeckel was dissertation adviser to Eliza Atkins Gleason, the first Black American to earn a doctorate in library science.

[11] To promote the ALA's National Plan, its President Charles H. Compton appointed Joeckel to head the Federal Relations Committee in 1934.

Also in 1937, Congress authorized funds to establish a Library Services Division in the US Office of Education.

[15] Joeckel headed up this committee and prepared a report that would act as, "a catalyst" for MacLeish's reorganization of the Library over the next three years.