Schaumburg Twp. Library director retiring

After 41 years of continuous service and community growth, Michael Madden will retire as director of the Schaumburg Township District Library in December.

Madden, who received the North Suburban Library System's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, made the announcement in his characteristically low-key fashion at the end of Monday's library board meeting.

"Absolutely, I did not see it coming," said Bob Lyons, a board member since 1969. "In the last few years I've certainly thought about what Mike's plans were, but he's never said."

Fellow Trustee Debby Miller said Madden's personal and personnel skills are undoubtedly what have made him stand out in his profession.

"He knows who to hire and how to work with them once they're hired," she said.

In fact, several of the region's other library directors developed their leadership skills while working for Madden, Miller said.

Madden said he simply felt it was time to step down after so many years and because he'll be 70 this year.

He intends to keep busy with the online business he started in 2001 selling items he finds at estate sales. He also teaches a class at the library about how others can sell on eBay.

Madden's decades of service began from what was meant to be a mere career stepping stone back in 1967.

His job as a Chicago high school teacher had led to a position at the American Library Association. But when his application for a promotion was turned down because of his lack of library service, he went to work for Schaumburg Township's young library.

"I thought it would be good experience at a small library, and then I'd return to the American Library Association," Madden said in 2006.

But instead, as the library and its community grew, Madden found personal and professional challenge in keeping ahead of the change. One of his major achievements was overseeing the construction of the new main library building, which opened in 1998 at Roselle and Schaumburg roads.

Even as the library became a model throughout the nation, Madden remained the considerate, organized and unselfish person he'd been at the start, Lyons said.

"The very fact that in the design of the new building he made his office an interior office with a window that faces into the library … that's very symbolic of him," Lyons added.

Through the many years of Madden's management, the library board has been made up of what's been a largely harmonious mixture of active Democrats and Republicans. And that's something neither the Democratic Miller nor the Republican Lyons expects to change as they begin a search for a successor.

"I'm sure politics will not enter into the selection process," Miller said. "I can guarantee that. (Madden) picked the optimal time because it's before the next board election."

"Whatever people's political credentials are will be left outside the library," Lyons said. "There's not a Republican way or a Democratic way to be a library director."

The board will meet at 9 a.m. Saturday at the library to discuss whether or not to use a search firm or consultant.