This last year, we had occasions to look back and honor our past, and to look ahead and feel excited for our future.
Our Library turned 60 in 2022! From humble beginnings inside a small house, with items kept in every nook and cranny (including the bathtub!), our Library has grown not only in size, but in service to the community.
Also in 2022, our Teen Place celebrated its 10th anniversary. This year, we were honored to have our Teen Place recognized with a student-selected Safe Space Award from the Communities for Positive Youth Development (CPYD) coalition. This means students in our community find our Teen Place to be exceptionally affirming, encouraging, and of course, safe. We're so glad to provide a welcoming environment for teens!
In years past, we were a part of a group of suburban libraries where each library had a special area of focus with their collections and services. Our specialty: businesses. While we're no longer the business library of the area, we still do offer incredible support for local businesses. In fact, in 2022, we were able to provide more than $29 million in value to our local business community by offering no-cost services, materials, equipment and more!
Finally, just before our 2022-23 fiscal year ended, we were able to kick off a renovation on the second floor of our Central Library. This renovation will be completed in spring 2024 and we're excited for all it will bring to our community:
- An innovation center for individuals, groups and small businesses to collaborate, discover, learn and create
- More study rooms for individuals or groups to study, read or work
- A dedicated copying, scanning and printing area
- A quiet room dedicated to the local history of Schaumburg
- A variety of additional seating options
- And, of course, a home for our nonfiction collection, including some more browsable displays
While it's fun to both reflect and dream, we also got some hard work done this year! Each year, we're always amazed and proud of all that we can accomplished with your support. Take a look at a few of the highlights from the last year.
Removing Barriers
Improving access to our buildings, services, collections and programs is an ongoing focus for us. We want to ensure everyone is welcome at our Library. This year, we took some more great steps ahead in this area.
Your Schaumburg Library card no longer expires! You used to have to renew your card every few years, but no more. We now update our information using the National Change of Address database, so we can take care of this task for you.
We now subscribe to LanguageLine, a live translation service to help us serve our patrons in their native languages. This service, available at all public desks at all locations, gives us immediate access over the phone to translators for more than 200 languages, including the most spoken languages in our community, like Spanish, Polish, Gujarati, Urdu and Japanese.
We installed bike repair stations at all our locations, a solar charging table at our Central Library and shelters around the Pick-Up Lockers at our branches. We're making sure the outsides of our buildings are as inviting and useful as the insides!
We added additional open hours at all our locations. We're doing our best to be open and available at the times when you most need our services.
Our new mobile app, "save for later" option in our catalog and account alert banners all help make your online experience with us personalized, simple and user-friendly. We also offer virtual tours of all our locations, so you can take a peek inside and know what to expect in our Library before you come to visit us.
Hands-On Learning
We hosted four fantastic exhibits in the last year. Everyone experiences the world around them in different ways and these exhibits really spoke to tactile and visual learners.
"Thomas Edison's Secret Lab" was at our Library through September 2022. Based on the animated series of the same name and the work of Thomas Edison, this unique, enormous exhibit helped kids and families experiment with electricity and magnets, operate the six classic simple machines, learn basic coding and more.
For a few weeks in early 2023, the "Salt Smart and You" exhibit to helped us learn how to use salt smartly, how too much salt impacts us and our environment, and more. We were proud to partner with three area libraries and Northwest Water Planning Alliance to create and display this exhibit.
In support of our One Book, One Community, we hosted 30 original, exquisite lifetime prints by the legendary documentary photographer Dorothea Lange from her "America" collection. Visitors were particularly excited to see these photos in our Library, calling the exhibit "incredible" and "refreshing," noting how pleasantly surprised they were to see great art for free in the suburbs.
And in the spring of 2023, we brought the traveling exhibit "Some Assembly Required" to our Central Library. Through activities like designing a quilt, constructing a bridge and joining a band, this exhibit used STEAM concepts to inspire kids to be curious, solve problems, work together and express themselves.
Thank you!
We would not be the amazing Library we are without your support. Thank you for visiting, for checking out books and for joining our programs. Thank you for trusting us as a safe place to learn, create, discover and grow.
Board of Trustees
- Theresa Seyring, President
- Carole Pye, Vice President/Secretary
- Emily GIlbert, Treasurer
- Jillian Bernas
- John Caporale
- Anita Forte
- Amy Mueller
Leadership Team
- Annie Miskewitch, Executive Director
- Molly Scheibler, Deputy Director
- Aaron Bock
- Amber Creger
- Kate Niehoff
- Paul Piraino
- Jason Santos
- Hollis Sienkiewicz
- Lori Teipel
- Gail Tobin
- Beth Valenziano