February 2015

Behind the Jones Library, 1953

Area behind the Library before the renovation of the early 1990s.

(Originally posted on February 5, 2015)

The Library’s Auditorium

The Jones Library’s first director, Charles Green, believed the building should act as both library and community center. In a letter to journalist Jerry Rand, Green wrote, “The use of the auditorium is something quite different and perhaps unusual. One of the principal ideas we have had in mind in the use of the auditorium is the fact that we have over in the main part of the building a very well rounded collection of books…So in the auditorium we have provided opportunity for the expression of the spoken word on every blessed subject under the sun.” The space that housed the auditorium is now home to the adult fiction stacks.

(Originally posted on February 12, 2015)

The First Public Computer

Today, Amherst’s public libraries have over 24 public computers with access to the internet available for use by anyone who visits the library, but in 1989, there was only one: the Apple IIe. And library patrons would have to wait another seven years before they could access the internet. Beginning in May 1996, if you had a library card and attended a half-hour training session, you could sign up to use the one computer in the library with internet access.

(Originally posted on February 19, 2015)

Children’s Room, Amherst House

The children’s room is a vibrant, bustling place – and it always has been! Pictured below is what the children’s room looked like when the Jones Library was housed in the Amherst House between 1921 and 1926. When a fire destroyed the Amherst House in 1926, college students assisted in saving almost all the books in the children’s department as well as much of the furniture.

(Originally posted on February 26, 2015)