<p>I'm having a difficult time figuring out how to add a .jar/library to a Netbeans project in such a way that I can get it committed to the repository.</p>

<p>The typical way to add a library (per the Netbeans documents I've already gone through) ends up with it just being local to me.  Anyone who checks out my project ends up missing my required library.</p>

<p>Inserting it manually and trying to work around Netbeans results in Netbeans hanging while trying to scan the project...</p>

<p>So, how can I tell Netbeans to pick up a jar as a library and include it in my project in such a way that Subversion will be able to handle it?</p>

Not really an answer to your question but... generally you should not include these libraries in your subversion repository. There is usually no need to have them managed. What you might want is to set up a central repository similar to what happens with maven. If you use maven, you can create a local repository of libraries on a server accessible by the team. The dependencies on these libraries are entered in the pom.xml file and this is in the subversion repository. Now, as team members check out the code from subversion they all have access to the maven repository.
[I am looking for a reference to this right now. When I find it I'll edit this answer.]