schaumburg review 020906 Still in circulation Longtime library director honored with lifetime achievement award BY KAREN SHOFFNER STAFF WRITER Michael Madden reckons he has managed not one library but several differently sized libraries for nearly 40 years in Schaumburg. When the Schaumburg Township District Library director was hired in 1967, he had one full-time employee and a few part-timers. Madden describes the building on what was known as Library Lane as being "very small." He recalls shoveling snow from the sidewalks because the library didn't have a maintenance staff. A farmer and his wife would come in at night to clean, he said. Madden has seen the library from those decidedly humble beginnings through a handful of expansions on Library Lane to the openings of branch libraries in Hoffman Estates and Hanover Park and the opening in 1998 of the 166,501-square-foot Central Library at Schaumburg and Roselle roads. "I've been the director of three or four different libraries without ever leaving. This has gone from being a relatively tiny library to one of the biggest in the state," he said. Acknowledging his success, the North Suburban Library System is honoring Madden with its Lifetime Achievement Award at the NSLS's annual banquet March 17. In previous years, a committee had chosen the Lifetime Achievement Award winner from among several nominations. This year, said Sarah Long, NSLS director, the nominations were open for all NSLS members to vote on. "What he has done in terms of his own leadership is incredible. He's active on the state and national levels. His credentials are impeccable," Long said. Tim Jarzemsky, a former Schaumburg library employee and currently director of the Bloomingdale Public Library, was eager to talk about Madden and his influence on him. "The one thing I try to emulate is that he identifies the talents of people who work for him and lets them do projects. It's sort of sink or swim. He gave me responsibilities at the different branch libraries. He gave myself and the other middle managers a lot of responsibilities," Jarzemsky said. A testament to Madden's knack for identifying and nurturing employees' talents is the number of former employees who have gone on to be library directors. In addition to Jarzemsky, they are: David Ruff at the Rolling Meadows Public Library, Patricia Hogan at the Poplar Creek Public Library District, Todd Morning at the Bartlett Public Library, and Dawn Bussey at the River Forest Public Library. Madden became Schaumburg's library director almost by chance. Indeed, he fell into library science while he was working as a teacher. To become certified as an English teacher in the Chicago Public School system then, you had to take a library science class, he said. He took it on Saturdays at the University of Chicago. One Saturday, the teacher asked him after class if he had thought of becoming a librarian. Madden thought about it and decided to give it a try. He enrolled at the graduate library school at the University of Chicago. He didn't particularly care for his first job at a high school. He loved his next job as a professional assistant at the American Library Association in Chicago. In 1967, Madden saw an advertisement for college teachers at Harper College, which operated out of Elk Grove High School then. He went for the interview. The chairman of the English department at Harper, who was also on Schaumburg's library board, told Madden that the board would be conducting interviews for the library director position on the following night. He asked if Madden wanted to be interviewed. Madden's wife said it wouldn't hurt to do the interview. So the next night Madden drove out to Schaumburg from the city and was interviewed. "They offered me this job that night. I was taken aback by it," he said. Madden's wife wanted to know where Schaumburg was. "She'd never heard of it. This was before Woodfield," he said. He decided to take the job because he thought it would look good on his résumé to be the director of what he considered a country library. "I commuted here for two years from the city. It was easy. Everybody else was going the other way," he said. To many people who live and work in Schaumburg now, the Schaumburg that Madden encountered in 1967 would be unrecognizable. "There was nowhere to eat lunch, really. You had to bring your lunch. There was a bar run by Mrs. Lengl. She'd make a sandwich for you. There was also a little storefront chicken place and that was it. Our maintenance man's sons could play baseball on Golf Road at night. There were so few cars then," Madden said. The Maddens moved to Schaumburg two years into his tenure as director. In 1968, the lower level of the library was finished and the children's department opened. The 1970s brought tremendous growth to the Schaumburg area and the expansion of the Central Library building was completed in 1972. Also, in the 1970s, the first branch library opened in Hoffman Estates. Libraries and how they are run have changed a great deal during the time Madden has been Schaumburg's library director. "Everything is heavily computerized. The growth of audio-visual materials is just staggering. Back then you had long-playing records and 8 mm materials because 16 mm was outrageously expensive. And you didn't have all the home entertainment things that you have now," he said. He noted that the community itself is far more diverse today, not just racially and ethnically, but also economically and with regards to the age of the population. "Back then, the community was very much geared to young families. There wasn't a big age spread," he said. In the 1970s, suburban libraries began developing specialty collections. Schaumburg chose to develop a business collection. Today, it is widely known as one of the best business reference collections around. The library also has far more ESL materials and items in languages such as Polish, Spanish and Korean in its collection. The demand for meeting rooms has also skyrocketed, Madden said, and librarians are doing more training, particularly computer training, for patrons. Madden said he hasn't given any thought to retiring from the Schaumburg library, but whenever he does retire from the library, he'll keep busy. "I'm probably the type of person who'll never completely retire. As long as I'm in good health, I'll keep working," he said. Jarzemsky said that when Madden does retire, he'll leave behind some "tough shoes to fill." Karen Shoffner