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A Little Slice of History

History of the Fort Worth Public Library
The city's first library began in April 1892 as an idea by 20 women, meeting at the home of Jenny Scheuber, to form the Fort Worth Public Library Association. Within one month, this association had received its state charter, but it took the association's contacting wealthy philanthropist Andrew Carnegie for it to bring the Fort Worth Public Library and Art Museum into existence. Carnegie, who was donating building funds for libraries throughout the English-speaking world, suggested the women ask the local gentlemen for "the price of a good cigar" to help raise the necessary local supporting funds. When the City Council approved spending $4,000 per year to run the library, Carnegie contributed $50,000 for the building.

Fort Worth's first library opened in 1901. One hundred-plus years later, the Fort Worth Public Library has grown from a library with 1 building, 5 staff, a budget of around $4,000 and just under 7,000 books, to a system with 15 locations, over 220 staff, a $16.3 million dollar annual budget, and over 2 million books, DVDs, CDs, online databases, magazines, government documents, and microfiche. The Fort Worth Public Library Foundation celebrates Mr. Carnegie's generosity each year with its annual Cigar Smoker. We celebrate his legacy every day as we continue to find new ways to provide exciting programs, collections, and other library services to the residents of Fort Worth.

National Conference of African American Librarians 2007

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Rub-a-Dub-Dub, I Read in the Tub Yesterday

Is a book its shape? Or its delivery system? No, of course not. (In case you were wondering those were rhetorical questions.)In ancient days, books were inscribed on rolls of vellum or papyrus. Then came the codex, pages bound between covers of various substances like leat...

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