HUMANITIES ENDOWMENT CHALLENGE GRANT

In June 2005, the Durham County Library was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to receive one of only 10 Challenge Grants offered nationally. In order to qualify for the entire half-million dollars, the Durham Library Foundation needed to raise $1.5 million from nonfederal sources by Jan. 31, 2008.

“NEH Challenge Grants contribute to the long-term viability and strength of America's leading cultural institutions and their humanities programs,” said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. “These grants encourage support from individual, foundation and corporate donors to benefit the cultural life of our communities and our nation.”

Nearly 1,000 businesses and individuals contributed more than $1,500,000 to leverage the $500,000 challenge grant and to establish a permanent Humanities Endowment to be managed by the Durham Library Foundation.

Year after year, the Humanities Endowment will fund programs and collections to support the residents of our diverse community as they examine questions of self, community and the world, mining the wealth of local and national scholars and scholarly resources.

Philip Cherry, former library director, said, “This is an historic moment for Durham County and the Durham County Library. The NEH grant and the endowment it helps to create will allow the library to do more through its partnerships to ensure that residents enjoy a community that is vibrant, rich in aesthetic beauty and embraces and promotes its cultural heritage.”

Durham County Library director, Skip Auld noted, “Funds generated from the Humanities Endowment are helping the library deepen programming partnerships with Duke University, North Carolina Central University, Durham Public Schools, Durham Technical Community College, the Museum of Life and Science, Durham Historic Preservation Society, Hayti Heritage Center, El Centro Hispano and the myriad other arts, cultural and educational institutions represented in the community.”

In July 2007, the Durham Library Foundation distributed the first $75,000 from the endowment to support new and dynamic humanities programs and acquisitions planned by two part-time Humanities Coordinators.

Early highlights from the Humanities Endowment:

The art exhibit, “Spirit of Freedom: Drawings & Narratives from Nelson Mandela's Imprisonment at Robben Island” was on display for 10 weeks at the Main Library in the fall of 2007. The drawings were done by Mandela, icon of the anti-apartheid movement, after he was released from prison, but before he was elected as the first president of South Africa in 1994. It was loaned from the American Tobacco Campus through special arrangement with Capitol Broadcasting Co. NEH funds allowed the library to hire Dr. Karin Shapiro, Professor of History at Duke University, to prepare historical and bibliographical information especially for the library's exhibit and provided for a lecture by former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, James Joseph relating Mandela's legacy to current events.

The Foundation provides almost half of the Summer Reading Club budget, which allows staff to provide many varied activities and programs to encourage children to engage their minds at the library and to encourage families to read together. The library reached 20,831 children, teens and adults with programs, registered more than 12,000 readers and circulated more than 100,000 items for children and young adults in summer 2007.

Last January more than 350 kids of all ages came to a library-sponsored concert by “Harry and the Potters,” an indie-rock band of two brothers from Boston. They were loud, fun and all their songs related to one of the books! “Kids” from 5 to 65 enjoyed the concert and it encouraged young people to join the library family of readers as they grow into imaginative and literate adults.

An Evening with Chris Rabb: Genealogy, Identity and Family Culture was made possible in partnership with the John Hope Franklin Collection in the Rare Book, Manuscript, Special Collection Library at Duke University and St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation, Inc. at the Hayti Heritage Center. Rabb, a consultant, writer and social commentator, discussed how genealogy and the legacy of the civil rights movement contribute to personal identity and family culture, especially for black Americans.