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The Jones Library of Amherst, Massachusetts is a public library with three locations, the main building and two branches. The library was established in 1919 by a fund set up in the will of lumberman Samuel Minot Jones. The library is governed by a Board of Trustees and provides a range of library materials, electronic resources, programming, special collections and events for residents of Amherst and the surrounding area. The library is on the Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations’ Literary Landmark Register in recognition of its association with poet Robert Frost.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Literary Landmark: Jones Library )〕 == History == Samuel Minot Jones was a Civil War soldier and lumber trader whose family had lived in Amherst since 1839. Although he spent most of his own life in Chicago and New Jersey, he retained an attachment to Amherst and particularly to Amity Street, the location of his childhood home. In his 1905 will, Jones laid out a provision that should “no child survive me or all die before the age of twenty-one years,” the money willed to his children should instead go to the town of Amherst to fund a free public library. He died on October 10, 1912. In 1918 Samuel Minot Jones’ only son, Minot Jones, died of Spanish influenza at age nineteen while serving in World War I. At that point Jones’ fortune was entrusted to the town of Amherst and the Jones Library trustees, an amount then totaling $661,747.08. On March 21, 1919, the Massachusetts Legislature passed an act of incorporation allowing “The Jones Library, Incorporated,” to receive and administer their endowment funds. In April 1919 the trustees held their first meeting. Although both Jones’ will and the act of incorporation specified the construction of a fireproof building, the trustees set up a temporary “reading room” in apartment housing across the street from their future building site. The first librarian of the Jones Library was Charles Robert Green. He had been the librarian of the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now University of Massachusetts Amherst) since 1908, but the College’s budgetary restrictions on their library induced him to seek other work. He was appointed the librarian of the Jones Library on September 1, 1920. From 1920 to 1926, Green established the Jones Library in the temporary space nearby the building site and expanded the collection. Over five thousand books were received from the recently closed Amherst town library, and the Boltwood family donated a collection of local history books and manuscripts. In 1922 the library began to host programming in one of the rented rooms, including academic lectures, storytelling, and adult literature classes. On December 9, 1926 a fire broke out in the apartment building that served as the library’s temporary location. Local college students worked with firefighters to save many of the books and furniture, and though the library lost significant portions of collections and their records, they were able to re-open in hastily-leased rooms the very next day. The new rooms were in the F.S. Whipple home on North Pleasant Street, directly adjacent to the lot on Amity Street purchased as a location for the projected library building, on which construction soon began. The Amity Street building, designed by Allan Cox of the Putnam & Cox architecture firm, was completed on November 1, 1928. The trustees and architects intentionally designed the building to look more like a home than a public space: the intention was for the library to play the role of “Mother Amherst welcoming her children home.” It was also one of the first libraries to house a public auditorium space for community performances and gatherings; the idea was so new that when the programs first started the librarian wrote to the State Library Commission to check that they were legally allowed to hold events in a library space. Charles Green, the first librarian, encouraged local authors, poets, academics, biographers and other literary figures to come speak at the library. Notable performers and patrons of the library included poets David Morton, Robert Francis and Robert Frost, Nobel Prize winner Dr. William Murphy, Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, and journalist Ray Stannard Baker (under his pseudonym David Grayson). William F. Merrill became the second director of the library in 1954. The subsequent directors were Quentin De Streel (1970-1975), Anne Turner (1975-1980), Bonnie Isman (1980-2010) and Sharon Sharry (2011–present). In 2003 the Jones Library formed a sister library relationship with a library in Kanegasaki, Japan. The libraries exchange books and resources, particularly those related to Emily Dickinson. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jones Library」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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