How can I learn about the library's history?
Answer:
On June 8th, 1904, the Rogers Public Library opened its doors on the second floor of a local grocery store at 1st and Poplar Streets with 458 volumes available for checkout. First organized and operated by the Rogers Women's Study Club, the library became an entity of the City of Rogers in 1933 and has been housed in six building in its lifetime. Its first dedicated building was the former Rogers Post Office, renovated and optimized for library use with the help of Cass Hough, the President of Daisy Manufacturing. The Rogers-Hough Memorial Library opened in 1963 and for 30 years saw the expansion of both the Rogers community and its collections. By the 1990s, the library offered not just books but vinyl records, audio cassettes, VHS tapes, Polaroid cameras, microfilm, magazines, newspapers, phone books, printing services, a fax machine, and more.
In March of 1992, the Friends of the Rogers Public Library acquired 3.924 acres at 711 South Dixieland Road, and the birth of the Library as we know it today began. The Rogers Public Library opened its doors in its current location in the Spring of 1994 with an expanded collection of over 50,000 items, a state of the art computer system, and a larger, dedicated Children's Library. Just a decade later, ground was broken during the library's 100th anniversary for an expansion for an even larger Children's Library, officially titled the Wal-Mart Children's Library. By the time of this expansion, library collections totaled over 116,000 physical and digital materials. Today, the library holds more than 170,000 books, magazines, DVDs, audiobooks, CDs, video games, ebooks, databases, playaways, books in braille, and so much more. Since opening its doors, the Rogers Public Library has circulated items more than 15 million items to over 7 million visitors!
Want to learn more? Check out our digital archive! The Rogers Public Library Digital Archive is a project intended to make the library's history more accessible to the community. It features photographs and documents of the library's buildings, programs, staff, and patrons from the 1960s to today.
The collections contained on this site are but a fraction of the material housed in our archive at the library. If you are looking for something in particular that you cannot find online, contact us and our staff will be happy to help!
