Princeton Public Library wins $500,000 grant, but there’s a catch

By Nick Norlen, Staff Writer
   The National Endowment for the Humanities has offered the Princeton Public Library a $500,000 grant with just one catch: The library has to match those funds with $1.5 million.
   Assistant Library Director Elba Barzelatto said the library was well aware of the conditions of the matching grant when it applied several months ago — and is up to the task.
      Ms. Barzelatto said the library’s endowment campaign will be used to raise those funds — and library officials are confident a minimum of $1.5 million in private funds will be acquired by 2010, if not sooner.
   The grant application was part of the library’s effort to become “the pre-eminent center for humanities programming in central New Jersey,” according to a document provided by Ms. Barzelatto, which cites plans to create the “Princeton Public Library Endowment for the Humanities.”
   ”The fund will ensure that financial support is available — in perpetuity — to help sustain PPL’s annual humanities programming, implement new initiatives, and help grow the Library’s related collections and technology resources,” the document states.
   Ms. Barzelatto said the library had to complete a “very detailed grant proposal” to be eligible for the grant offer.
   That proposal was eventually selected — based on the strength of the application — after a series of reviews culminating in a final approval by the NEH chairman, according to the NEH communications office.
   ”This is very competitive and you have to qualify on several areas to be able to get this grant,” Ms. Barzelatto said.
   If obtained, the $2 million in funding would help create the library’s humanities endowment, which would in turn fund a new humanities fellowship, provide public programming, related acquisitions and technology, and cover fund-raising expenses.
   Of that $2 million, the Princeton Public Library Foundation would invest $1.85 million to establish the endowment, with its annual yield being allocated to fund those costs beginning in September 2010.
   The remaining $150,000 would help underwrite staff costs associated with fundraising as well as “bridge funds” to maintain humanities programming through 2010.
   According to the NEH Communications Office, the grant would be paid out through 2011 over four installments, all of which would require a three-to-one match from the library.
   The library would be allowed to meet the final installment with a one-to-one match, with a 2013 deadline, if needed, to contribute the balance.
   The grant also requires at least two “narrative performance reports” — due in years two and four — on the progress of the fundraising and the status of the program funded by the grant, respectively.
   In addition to the grant offer to the library, the NEH also awarded $134,400 in outright grants to Princeton University for research fellowships to be pursued by three different teachers.
   Those fellowships include $33,600 for research of “The Political Style of the Prophet Muhammad,” $50,400 for the project “Bombay/Mumbai Fables: Imaginary Histories of the Modern City,” and $50,400 for study of “Stalin’s World and Dictatorship in Modern Times.”