Brenda Palone dips her paintbrush in the black watercolor on her artist palette. Without thinking too much about it, she quickly begins to paint tree branches on the left side of her blank paper.
She can’t help but smile as the dozens of people sitting around her inside the Golden Triangle Library in north Fort Worth paint their own versions of tree branches. The watercolor club is what she most looks forward to every Thursday.
“The club gives you an opportunity to explore things you might not try otherwise,” she said.
Palone has been a patron at the Golden Triangle branch of the Fort Worth Public Library for about four years. But in the past year, she’s increasingly utilized the location’s programs with her parents as a way to keep them busy and moving, Palone explained.
“It started with being something that I can bring my parents to and we can do together. It’s been all that and more,” she said. “I love the library.”
Palone isn’t the only resident who used a Fort Worth Public Library branch more frequently within the last year.
The library system saw more than 1.14 million total visits across its 20 locations from October 2023 to September 2024 — a 14% increase from the 2023 fiscal year, according to its annual report released in March.
Fort Worth Public Library leaders don’t want to stop there. Over the next few years, they expect to expand services further as the city continues to boom in population.
“I am especially proud to be part of a team that completed several major projects while simultaneously delivering exceptional services and programs to the residents and guests of Fort Worth,” library director Midori Clark said in a statement.
Trending toward pre-pandemic numbers
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Fort Worth Public Library experienced a decrease in physical library use, but saw a surge in patrons tapping digital resources. Since then, the library system has been slowly working to build up in-person visits to pre-pandemic numbers, Clark told the Report in March.
Fort Worth Public Library had a total of 1.38 million visitors in its fiscal year 2019.
“You’ll see many public libraries across the country have not fully realized their pre-pandemic traffic, we’re still kind of waiting for the visits to get back to that place they were before,” she said. “I think the bright spots are that we are trending in an upward direction.”
In fiscal year 2024, Fort Worth Public Library saw 4,080,428 digital and physical checkouts across all its locations, resulting in a 16% increase from the previous year. There were 45,211 new library cards issued with 260,506 new items added to the collection and over 112,000 people who attended a library program.
Some of Fort Worth Public Library’s biggest programs include story times, computer classes, civics for citizenship, English as a second language and little builders for toddlers.
The locations with the biggest spikes in program visits included Ella Mae Shamblee Library in Historic Southside, La Gran Biblioteca inside the La Gran Plaza shopping center and Riverside Library in northeast Fort Worth.
Growth in foot traffic across all city locations has been fueled by strategies focused on new programs and cultivating relationships with staff, educators and neighborhood associations, according to the annual report.
“Part of our strategy has been to include the community in our programming decisions, working hard to reflect the interests and needs of our regular patrons with an eye to attract those that have not been to the library in a while,” Blake Farrell, branch manager for Ella Mae Shamblee Library, said in a statement.
The library system also opened two new locations: Downtown Express Library and Clifford Crossing Library in west Fort Worth. The express location, housed inside a room at the old City Hall, opened after the city closed its Central Library in June 2023.
As it grows, Fort Worth Public Library is in a unique position, Clark said, to further serve as a key tool for families as local leaders push for improved literacy rates among children. Across the city, 3 in 5 students cannot read on grade level.
“We are not the group that’s responsible for teaching children to read, but we view the library as a very important partner in that process, in that relationship in the area of early literacy,” Clark said.
Fort Worth prepares to expand library services
Although Fort Worth Public Library is celebrating its growing numbers, the system knows it needs to keep up the momentum.
“We definitely acknowledge there are different communities, pockets of people that don’t know about the library or that don’t use the library. We’re always hoping to connect with those communities,” Clark said.
In late March, the system broke ground on a new library branch in far north Fort Worth, with completion expected by the end of 2026. The library project was included in the city’s $560 million bond program in 2022, which voters overwhelmingly supported. The bond allocated $12.26 million for the library, with $7 million of that total dedicated to initial construction costs.
City Council member Alan Blaylock, who represents the far north Fort Worth area, previously said the project is an “example of much-needed city services coming further north,” and shows the city’s efforts to stay connected with north Fort Worth’s growing community.
Fort Worth is also preparing to establish a new downtown branch location two years after closing the Central Library. Council members voted in August 2024 to purchase a historic downtown building for about $6.5 million with the intent of renovating it for library use in the future.
The approximately 31,500-square-foot building previously housed the Center for Transforming Lives, a nonprofit agency focused on reducing poverty among women and children in Tarrant County. The center has since moved to a new headquarters.
In May, council members authorized a $6 million contract with construction management firm ECBuild for the design and renovation of the historic space. The downtown library’s opening date has yet to be determined, Clark said.
For now, the library staff is focused on ending the 2025 fiscal year strong, and Clark is optimistic the next report will show promising numbers.
“The community has been very responsive to what we’ve been adding, so I expect that we’ll see similar kinds of participation this year as well,” she said.
David Moreno is the arts and culture reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at [email protected] or @davidmreports.
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