[2] 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.

From 1920 to 1926, Green established the Jones Library in the temporary space nearby the building site and expanded the collection.

In 1922 the library began to host programming in one of the rented rooms, including academic lectures, storytelling, and adult literature classes.

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.

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).

[6] The Jones Library Emily Dickinson Collection currently consists of approximately seven thousand items, including original manuscript poems and letters, Dickinson editions and translations, family correspondence, scholarly articles and books, newspaper clippings, theses, plays, photographs, and contemporary artwork and prints.

The Jones Library Robert Frost Collection currently consists of approximately twelve thousand items, including original manuscript poems and letters, correspondence and photographs, as well as audio and visual recordings.

The Kids Room includes pre-reading books, multimedia resources, a toddler play space, and a Parenting Collection.

The Jones Library hosts a variety of programming for the local community, as part of its mission to support civic and cultural life in the region.

The range of programming includes events such as: The Digital Amherst Project is an online multimedia resource of historical and cultural materials.

The site contains over 1000 items such as written documents, photographs, sermons, multimedia presentations, and new articles[12] It was introduced at the 250th anniversary of the town of Amherst in spring 2009.

Part of the mission of the Gallery is to display a wide range of community art: “Collectively, the library's exhibits aim to reflect a variety of media, styles, cultural viewpoints, and levels of artistic experience”.