Jim Jacobs, the new librarian for the Pine Grove branch of the county library, shows off the newly reopened branch.

Photo by: Jerry Budrick

Pine Grove has its library back.

After nearly a year of literary deprivation, residents of Amador County's bustling Highway 88 community will be able to once again walk into a clean, well-lighted room full of books and videos available to them for free.

Though they may be changed in the future, hours of operation presently are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Visitors will also enjoy the added benefit of a dedicated and determined new librarian, Jim Jacobs, who was chosen from a group of more than 100 applicants for the part-time job of running the Pine Grove branch of the Amador County Library.

Jacobs has been living in Amador County for 10 years, one might suspect just waiting patiently for his ideal job to pop up. With a master's degree in English from Sonoma State University, 20 years of membership in writers' groups and experience as a substitute teacher in Amador and Calaveras counties, Jacobs met all of the qualifications.

The job he had for 20 years, managing a 600-acre cattle ranch in Sonoma County, evaporated in the inexorable march of progress and development around the city of Santa Rosa. Asked what brought him to Amador County, Jacobs replied, "I've always loved the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Gold Country."

"The Pine Grove Branch Library," Jacobs said, "is a mini-version of the main library. It has a computer available, 10-cent a page printing and copying, books for all age levels, reference volumes, audio books and videos." Well aware of the small branch's limited 541 square foot space, Jacobs added, "We will try to circulate the collections around the six branches. We hope to make this work for the community."

Amador County Librarian Laura Einstadter sounded enthusiastic about the process that took place in Pine Grove during the last few months. "We have gone through the collection of over 5,000 books and tapes," she said. "We hope people will come back again and again and that they are aware that inter-library loans are available at all the branches." This means that the much-larger collection at the main library in Jackson, plus the many thousands of materials at the other five branches, are all accessible through the Pine Grove branch.

Caught between former librarian Carolyn Bengston's departure for New York and Amador County's hiring freeze, the Pine Grove Branch closed in April 2007. It took the combined efforts of the Pine Grove Civic Improvement Club, county librarian Einstadter, Amador County Chief Administrative Officer Terri Daly and the Amador County Board of Supervisors to hammer out a compromise that allowed the branch to reopen with the hours of operation reduced to 12 weekly.

The obstacles facing the Pine Grove Branch last year were not exclusively financial. Pine Grove Town Hall is in a highly visible location in the center of town, across the highway from the fire station and sandwiched between Mountain Oaks School and a shopping complex/mini storage facility. Driveways on either side of the building lead to those facilities and are not part of the town hall, which has no official parking spaces to call its own.

Originally built in either 1879 or 1897 (depending on the historical account) as the Dance and Temperance Hall, the building has functioned as the town hall since 1907. Those were different times, when the Americans with Disabilities Act was not in effect. Today, access to the branch via the front staircase is a much larger issue, one that may be approaching a solution.

Pine Grove Civic Improvement Club President Lynda Burman feels confident that a substantial Community Development Block Grant suggested by the Amador County Recreation Agency will provide the funds needed to make the town hall and library handicap accessible and ADA compliant. The hall belongs to the county and the project will be under its control.