(Oneida, NY – Nov. 2015) Oneida Public Library’s New Library Project got a boost this fall with a sizeable donation and two large grants: a $15,000 donation from the members of the Skenandoah Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, a grant of $20,000 from the Gifford Foundation and an $86,899.00 New York State Public Library Construction grant.
On Oct. 1, DAR Chapter Regent Barbara Conniff and Treasurer Pat Taylor came to the OPL to give OPL Director Carolyn Gerakopoulos a donation of $15,000 for the capital campaign in memory of Neva Bligh Woodbury. The donation will be commemorated by a Skendandoah Chapter DAR Genealogical Center in the Historical Resources Room of the new library.
The DAR was founded in 1890 for genealogical, historic and educational purposes related to the American Revolution. The Skenandoah Chapter, so named in honor of the Oneida Nation Chief Skenandoah, was organized in Oneida Castle on Nov. 10, 1902.
Neva Bligh Woodbury, who was born in the Town of Lincoln in 1863, became a member of the Skenandoah Chapter in 1903. Her son, Walter Bligh Woodbury, left in his will a bequest in her honor for the purchase of a house for chapter meetings. That house on State Street in Oneida Castle was recently sold by the DAR chapter.
Another section of the new Oneida Public Library will also become a reality thanks to a $20,000 grant recently received from the Gifford Foundation expressly to equip the OPL Idea Lab. The lab will house “maker stations” for educational, recreational and business entrepreneurial purposes.
The Gifford Foundation, established in 1954, is a private foundation serving Syracuse and the surrounding Central New York community. The foundation supports individuals and organizations through grants and initiatives that “build on community assets and promote positive change in the community,” according to the foundation’s website at www.giffordfoundation.org.
The Idea Lab will offer community members a music station equipped with a digital keyboard and instrumental panel, microphone and recording capability for composing; a video station or small studio with a camcorder, microphone, lighting and computer; and a stand-alone self-publishing machine, including binding, that will allow digitized texts to be designed and “published” as a small book or pamphlet.
To encourage entrepreneurial creativity, the lab will include a 3-D printer for the making of three-dimensional designs and prototypes of parts. For young students of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), the lab will house game creation software with a state-of the art iMac computer and STEM project kits for fabricating, among other things, small robots.
Arts and crafts will not be forgotten as the lab will boast three digital sewing machines: an embroidery machine, one for patchwork quilt making and a computerized machine with 221-stitch capacity and its own LCD screen.
In September, the OPL’s New Library Project received from the state Education Department its third Public Library Construction grant, this time for $86,899 to help fund all the lighting and electrical work to be installed in the library facility. This year a total of 182 library construction projects in the state divvied up the $14 million capital fund appropriation for the Public Library Construction Program in the 2014/2015 state budget.
The $121,899 in new support will help reduce the New Library Project’s debt burden from a U.S.D.A. Rural Development loan under the Community Facilities Program, which will kick in when all private donations and grants have been expended. The project’s total cost is estimated to be $6.117 million, a figure not to be exceeded as mandated by the voters of the OPL Special Library District in a referendum last March 3. About $2.4 million of that total project cost is already accounted for in capital campaign donations and pledges as well as private foundation and government grants.