The Gilbreath Memorial Library in Winnsboro is just as cute as can be.

It has thousands of books, neatly organized in 7- or 8-foot, dark-wood shelves. It has a gorgeous, imaginative children’s area complete with a realistic-looking tree that spirals into a painted sky, mysterious wooden fairy-tale “doors” and a huge bay window to encourage readers to cozy up in its nook and find a good read.

It’s also got tons of local programs, ranging from its recently popular snow cone day to bilingual story time or story time at Backstage Coffee and Wine Lounge.

Walking into this great library, which is around 6,000-square-feet, one would never know that it’s run by just two employees.

One of the employees is Naul Rojas, who is absolutely essential to the library. Rojas helps plan the programs, works to implement them, does community networking and completes innumerable other vital tasks.

The other is Manuel Pasillas. The Gilbreath Memorial Library’s full-time director, Pasillas is involved in more things than it seems possible to do. He is the director of the library, which means he takes on all of the administrative duties such as cataloguing, reports, ordering more books, inventory, etc. He and Rojas clean the library, take care of all of the front desk work, put extensive time and energy into networking with community individuals and businesses and plan programs. 

Pasillas also recently enrolled in an 18-month-long library leadership program, in which he is one of 30 students across the USA and Canada chosen to study library leadership and its practical application, values and more. Pasillas mentioned that he’s also a college student with Texas A&M’s online program, where he’s pursuing his degree in business administration. In addition to all of this, he serves on multiple local boards.

Oh, and Pasillas is just 29 years old.

“It’s nice to see (people come in to the library),” he said. “It’s overwhelming, a bit, to get it all planned, but it’s OK. It’s worth the stress,” he said with a smile.

He came into the role of Winnsboro’s library director unexpectedly; although he had been working at libraries for several years, Pasillas says that he never expected to come work in Winnsboro.

It was when Hope Cain, the library director at the Sulphur Springs Public Library, mentioned that there was an opening in Wood County that he began to consider the prospect.

“I had recently quit Sulphur Springs to take a full-time position at the City of McKinney library system,” said Pasillas. “There was some turnover in city administration and Hope became aware of the open director position in Winnsboro. She knew about my career aspirations and presented the opportunity to me. Both her and McKinney Library director Spencer Smith encouraged me to take a chance and luckily the risk (paid) off.”

The Gilbreath Memorial Library, which had been running minimally if at all due to its having zero staff and only one dedicated, loyal volunteer, opened back up. A short time later, the library hired Rojas, and together the two, with volunteers aiding their efforts, made the library what it is today.

“We’ve hit the ground hard! Trying to get programs back up and running, introducing new services – I added a lot of different services in my first year,” said Pasillas.

Pasillas attributes his lack of overall burnout to partly “a personality thing.”

“Once I get my head down, and start working, you just kind of keep rolling,” he explained. “Sometimes I do have to slow down, take a step back!”

Although Pasillas has been working at the Gilbreath Memorial Library for only two and a half years, patrons of the library would never know it. The dedication, long hours and hard work he and Rojas have put into the library have made it great.