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Madden retires after 39 years at Boise State

Terry Madden

Terry Madden, Albertsons Library, faculty/staff, studio portrait by Diego Casillas

Terry Madden, an associate professor and librarian at Albertsons Library, will retire on July 23. The library staff invites the campus community to celebrate at a reception from 3-4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 20 in Room 105 of Albertsons Library.

When Madden began work at Albertsons Library in August of 1983, she worked as a computer literature search librarian conducting over 400 paid online searches for Boise State faculty and students per year. She said she remembers that the campus was about half its current size and the student body was around 5,000.

As campus and the student body grew and technology evolved, Madden’s work changed from conducting online searches for patrons to serving at the reference desk several hours per week, liaising with the kinesiology department and later multiple departments in the College of Health Sciences, and providing information literacy instruction to those departments and multiple University Foundations courses.

In her time at Boise State, Madden has answered thousands of questions at the reference desk and through chat reference, consulted one-on-one with thousands of students, faculty, and staff, and taught instruction sessions for hundreds of classes. Student and faculty feedback confirms her impact. In response to the service she provided, one faculty member wrote, “I am impressed with Terry Madden’s knowledge, accessibility, and willingness to help. She is a great resource.”

Madden said she plans to spend time post-retirement gardening and traveling.