Jones Library & Branches

05/31/2026

Get ready to take some great vacation photos this year!
Join us for this program via Zoom - please note that it will NOT be recorded, so plan to join us for the live event!
Learn more and register: https://www.joneslibrary.org/Calendar.aspx?EID=18384

05/31/2026

Heads up - summer hours begin next Sunday!

05/30/2026

Restaurant Week is coming!

Amherst Restaurant Week is a community-wide dining celebration happening June 7–13, 2026 in the heart of Downtown Amherst.

05/29/2026

Have you finished your May read yet? It's about time to submit your monthly entry!

05/29/2026

Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family
by Dorothy Roberts

Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s with a white father and a mother who was a Black Jamaican immigrant. As a 21-year-old graduate student, Dorothy's father dedicated himself to the study of in*******al marriage and her mother became his full-time partner in that work. They interviewed over 500 couples and assembled stunning stories about in*******al marriages - studying, but also living, championing, and believing in their power to advance social equality. Decades later, Roberts uncovers a truth that upends everything she thought she knew about her family: her father's research didn't begin with her parents' love story - it came long before it. This discovery forces her to wrestle with her father's intentions, her own views about in*******al relationships, and where she fits in that story. Roberts immerses herself in their interviews to trace the story of her parents and to better understand her own. Though grounded in her parents' research, Roberts reflects on her own childhood as a Black girl with a white father, and how those experiences shaped her into one of today's most prominent public thinkers and scholars on race. Blurring the boundaries between the political and the personal, between memoir and history, "The Mixed Marriage Project" is a moving meditation on family, race, identity, and love.

Find in our catalog: https://amherst.cwmars.org/GroupedWork/159ac294-b118-c610-ea6b-1e507fa0b934-eng

Sign up to get notified about our weekly pick by email or text. https://www.joneslibrary.org/list.aspx

05/28/2026

Throwback Thursday
Today we would like to highlight the Stowell family of North Amherst. Dr. Joab Stowell was born in Shutesbury in 1862, and married Helen Hubbard of Sunderland in 1894. Around 1900, they moved to North Pleasant Street, near the center of North Amherst. According to reminiscences of his granddaughter, Elizabeth Stowell Southwick Cooper, Dr. Stowell covered many miles by horse and then later automobile to visit his patients, and was often paid in livestock or other non-monetary means. He and Helen had two daughters, Marion and Elizabeth Parker, but Elizabeth tragically died of diphtheria and was buried on her 12th birthday. Clockwise from top left: a young Dr. Stowell; Helen Hubbard; Helen, Marion and Elizabeth Stowell Southwick, 1944; and Elizabeth Parker Stowell.

05/28/2026

Want to walk with the Jones Libraries in the Amherst Pride Parade? We'd love to have you join us!

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Amherst Pride Parade
Sunday, June 28
Parade: noon - 1pm*
Rally: 1 -3pm
❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

*We will meet at 11 am at Amherst Regional High School.

Interested folks should sign up so that we can get a head count:
joneslibrary.org/amherstprideparade
🌈

05/27/2026

Staff Pick of the Week
These Heathens by Mia McKenzie

Local author Mia McKenzie based the immensely likable 17-year-old character at the center of her novel, Doris Steele, on her remarkable grandmother. Doris leaves her familiar home in rural Georgia to travel to Atlanta in the company of her favorite English teacher, Mrs. Lucas. It is 1960, and the Civil Rights Movement, which hadn’t yet reached Doris’s town, is almost all people can talk about. Doris crosses paths with civil rights leaders and black celebrities. She meets people whose views on religion, segregation, class, politics, and homosexuality are shocking to her, and she prays, “Lord, please help me to see your purpose for bringing me among these heathens.” In fact, Doris is there because she asked her teacher to help her to obtain an abortion, a difficult task even in the big city. In one chaotic weekend, Doris’s world is transformed, and she discovers who she truly is.

Find in our catalog: https://amherst.cwmars.org/Record/5163161

05/27/2026

See the new items at the Amherst's Public Libraries at:

*** http://wowbrary.org/nu.aspx?fb&p=2896-653-CUS1001 ***

This week's 210 new physical items include "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie", "Hoppers", and "Goat".

05/26/2026

Need some tech help?
Stop by the drop-in session at the Senior Center on Thursday from 2 - 4 pm!