After opening in March, the Whitesburg Library is still creating its role in the community, but the branch manager knows she wants to support the local literary scene and has scheduled the library’s first-ever book signing for Whitesburg author Sybil Rosen.

“I think it’s important that the community get involved as far as knowing, first of all that she’s here,” branch Manager Jana Whetstone said. “Some people don’t know that Whitesburg has an author and this isn’t her first book. She has another book that we have on our shelves.”

Rosen wrote about living in Roopville during the 1970s with singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. The two were homeless and a friend offered them a wooden shack built around a pine tree with no walls, no electricity and no running water. They added walls, windows, a door and a wood stove and turned the shack into their home, inspiring the song “Living in the Woods in a Tree,” by Foley. Rosen also uses the title for her book.

Whetstone wants the community to support the author, just one of the ways she hopes to draw people in and get them hooked on books.

The library had a summer reading program in May and 48 children participated. The library started a teen book club this summer and offered a movie program. Now that school has started, Whetstone is planning a story hour for young children and plans are under way for an adult book club.

However, the thing that has surprised Friends of the Whitesburg Library member Jackie Pate is the popularity of the computers.

The library opened with six public-access computers hooked up to high-speed Internet but has already added another one to keep up with demand.

“We’re in a low economic area so a lot of these people they don’t have a computer, or if they do have a computer they can’t afford DSL,” Whetstone said.

Whetstone comes from a legal background and has never worked in a library. She has used libraries all her life working in a law office, but also while home schooling her children. But running a branch of the library system has been a new experience, she said. Being a member library in a larger system has given her a support group to help her get library programs up and running. It also gives patrons access to a much larger group of resources.

“We opened with 3,000 volumes,” Pate said. “We have shelf space for 10,000 volumes, but through the Pines Library System, you have access to 9 million different pieces.”

The library had its grand opening in June, the result of six years of effort by Friends members. The group started working on the project to provide children with access to a library, Pate said. It raised $150,000 and the city of Whitesburg gave $100,000 in special purpose local option sales taxes and donated the land. It truly is a community project, she said.

“One of my favorite moments in the whole process was the day we had the grand opening,” Pate said. “We asked everyone there - we had about 200 people there - who had anything to do with building the library, whether they contributed their time, their talents or their money, to stand up. Almost everybody stood up.”

Whetstone appreciates the community involvement. She had volunteers all summer to help her with the reading program and now that school has started, the Friends have made it possible to hire a part-time employee to help so that she can get some other programs up and running.

She knows the Friends will be at the library Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. for the book signing. Just as she knows they will show up for any future events.

“They really do step up,” Whetstone said. “This is like their baby. They birthed this thing.”