Library director reports visits, online hits on upswing over last year

Harold Hayes addresses Front Royal Rotarians – Rotary Courtesy Photo/Bret Hrbek

In a Friday luncheon speech to fellow Front Royal Rotarians, Samuels Public Library director Harold Hayes issued some eye-popping statistics for his first 11 months on the job.

Visitors to the local library July 2017 – June 2018 totaled 202,469, he said, while there were 109,454 website visits – quite a few more than when public library service was first offered in Front Royal back in 1799!

In a brief talk, Hayes, who is originally from Oregon, delved into the history of public libraries in Virginia saying that today, the library is the only place some people go for information about what’s going on around them.

While he has a master’s degree in library sciences, Hayes admitted to being what he termed “a reluctant reader” until 6^th grade, but with the encouragement of a teacher (identified as Mr. Jones) he took great leaps forward from then on, quickly moving into adult literature and becoming an avid reader the rest of his life.

Since arriving in Front Royal, Hayes reported 2,286 people had received new library cards at Samuels, 320,122 books were checked out along with 68,805 DVDs. Nine-thousand hours were donated by volunteers, almost equally split between adults (57) and youths (50). Some 12,000 new books were added. Hayes voiced a “thank you” to the volunteers for their work.