When Riverside Public Library Executive Director Janice Foley was told she was named the Riverside Township Lions Club’s Person of the Year for 2024, she cried.
“I was so blown away,” she told the Landmark. “When I got the call, I was just totally overwhelmed with emotion. It really meant and means the world to me that I was selected.”
Foley, who was recognized Sept. 25 at a celebratory dinner, first started working at the Riverside Public Library in April 1994, more than 30 years ago, in the library’s children and youth services section. Having been born and raised on the Southwest Side of Chicago, Foley came to Riverside after a brief stint away from the city with her young family.
“We went to Indiana — Richmond, Indiana — for four years, and I hated it. I hated everything about it. It was a small town, 70 miles east of Indianapolis, 40 miles west of Dayton. That’s the only thing that you could say about it,” she said. “I remember waking up in January of 1994, and I turned to [former] husband, and I said, ‘I don’t care whether you come with me or not. I’m taking the kids back to Chicago.’”
After working as an adult services librarian in Richmond, Foley said she was inspired to shift departments by her own children, who were 5- and 8-years-old at the time.
“I applied for the job, and I got an interview, and my interview was actually April 1, 1994, on April Fool’s Day,” she said. “I walked up to the building, because I had never seen it before, and I looked up, and — I’m Catholic by association — I said, ‘God, I want this job,’ and I hadn’t even interviewed.”
Five years later, the library director position became vacant, so Foley took a chance and put herself up for consideration. Now, with 25 years in the position, the rest is history.
Foley said multiple factors have kept her working at the library all this time.
“The community. My fellow staff. It’s just a really nice place to work,” she said. “I’ve gotten involved with the Chamber [of Commerce]. I’ve gotten involved with the farmers market and Friends of the Library … It’s basically my second home.
“This is my family,” she added. “The only more important people are my immediate family.”
She said she only once considered leaving the library to work elsewhere, “but there was never a need because all of my professional things were being fulfilled here. My personal things were being fulfilled here. My kids basically grew up [here].”
While Foley has no specific plans to retire, she said she’s considering doing so within the next few years.
“I don’t want to stay around and be obsolete. There will be a time for fresh leadership,” she said. “I think if I felt that I wasn’t changing with the times or doing things, I would have left earlier, or I would leave, but I still have just a few things left, and then after that it’ll be, OK, now I can relax and hopefully enjoy what I’ve worked hard for.”
Foley named the library’s lower-level remodel in 2020 as the accomplishment she was most proud of in her quarter century as its director.
“I have to say that I dreamt about it when I worked downstairs. Like, ‘This place needs to be updated,’” she said. “It was a long, long journey, but probably about 10 or 12 years ago, the boards started realizing that, hey, yeah, this could be a thing. When we had our referendum back in 2020, it was the Tuesday after the Monday everyone shut down for COVID, and we passed it with 70% of the vote. That was like, ‘Yes! People understand, and they love us.’”
When asked to name her favorite thing about Riverside, Foley’s immediate answer was, “The library!” But when she thought about it further, she gave another response.
“The excitement of the people who live for the important things in life,” she said. “They really support, and they love, their community, and I think that’s pretty exciting … I live in River Forest now, and it doesn’t have that same feel as Riverside. It’s kind of a hidden little island, almost, and from the minute I came, it was like, ‘This is great.’ I mean, it’s magical. I know that sounds weird, but it is, to me.”
Reflecting on her decade-spanning career at the library, Foley started to tear up with emotion.
“The years have flown quickly, and it has been very fulfilling. It’s such a part of me that it will be weird when it’s not a part of me, because it’s like it’s always been there. I was a working mom, and my kids knew that work was important, and the fact that they always supported me, and they support me now, even. In fact, they did my introduction at the dinner,” she said. “Family is very important to me, and Riverside became my family very quickly. Once you’re my family, I’m right behind you, and I’m always there for you. And I think that that’s what’s happened with the library.”
