Denton Public Library patrons who owe a fine or want to make a donation still have to do it in person. A city grant is set to change that next year.
The library won money from the city's first Innovation Grant program for an online payment system and a new point-of-sale system at its service desks, according to a staff memo for the Library Board's meeting Monday, Nov. 9. The board meets at 5:30 p.m. in the meeting room at Emily Fowler Central Library, 502 Oakland St.
The grant program was open to city departments that proposed new ways to work more efficiently or improve services. Planning will run through the winter, and the library expects to put the systems in place in late spring 2027, the memo says.
Behind its neighbors
A presentation by Kimberly Wells, manager of the Emily Fowler branch, compares Denton with 15 other North Texas library systems. Denton and Richardson are the only two listed without online payments; Wichita Falls is shown as installing them this budget year. Dallas, Fort Worth, Frisco, McKinney, Lewisville and Allen are among the systems that already take payments online.
The library says online payments would let patrons settle fees at any hour, cut down on people being turned away at the desk over unpaid fees and serve as a first step toward letting residents apply for a library card online.
The new registers are meant to fix a bookkeeping problem. Over the past 12 months, the cash register and the library's catalog system disagreed on 76 days, and staff spent about 58 hours tracking down the differences, according to the presentation. The goal is to bring both numbers to zero and to raise donations, which totaled $5,148 in fiscal 2024-25, by 25%.
One-time costs total $12,977.44. Upkeep would be free the first year and about $3,039 a year after that, which the library says it can cover in its current administrative budget because of savings on other software.
A busier year
The board will also review the library's numbers for the fiscal year that ended in September. Visits rose 4% to 514,129, and event attendance grew from 36,788 to 46,325. The library issued 9,032 new cards, up 6%, and checked out 1,122,346 items.
