Cofrin Library tees off with mini-golf fundraiser

GREEN BAY — Campus and community are invited to play a round at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay on Friday, Feb 13, with “Caddy Stacks” night inside the school’s Cofrin Library.

The unique mini-golf event is scheduled for 5 to 9 p.m. Admission is $5 per player. Proceeds will benefit collections and services of the Cofrin Library.

“This is a fundraiser, but it’s also a nice way to show off the range of the Library’s collections to the general public,” says UW-Green Bay Prof. David Voelker, who is president of the Friends of the Cofrin Library, the nonprofit group promoting the event. “It’s a great way to beat cabin fever. All we ask is that players stick to putting. No driving.”

The 18-hole, par-54 course will put most of the eight-story building in play, with holes winding through study areas and special collections. Theme-hole concepts were developed by staff librarians and student assistants.

Players will find the No. 1 tee box just inside the main plaza entrance on the second floor of the Library. If their tee shots carry (into the elevator), they’ll be putting for par on the seventh floor. From there, they’ll find challenges all over the map — literally, as one hole will zig-zag through the extensive map collections — and discover art-, history- and music-themed holes, among others. The fifth, or Washington Monument hole, for example, will be situated in the government documents area.

As they play their way to the finishing hole back on the plaza level, golfers will educate themselves as to book-cart hazards, book-stack doglegs, computer-monitor bank shots and, on at least one hole, piping that will carry their shots to a green one floor below.

Families are welcome. Equipment will be provided. Gallery cheering is allowed, too; circulation assistant Leah Liebergen notes that normal operations are closed at that time, so “shush” and “quiet please” — more stereotype than reality, anyway — are out the window.

Participants will be eligible for door prizes and awards for low scores.

The David A. Cofrin Library is located at the end of the Main Entrance boulevard on the campus at 2420 Nicolet Drive, Green Bay. Parking is available nearby at the Weidner Center. Questions about “Caddy Stacks” should be directed to Liebergen at (920) 465-2540 during normal business hours

#09-21

Video Transcript

Text
Have you heard the news?
UW-Green Bay’s Cofrin Library…
… is turning into a golf course…
… on Friday, Feb. 13???

Well, maybe not like that…
… but the library will have a full, 18-hole mini-golf course throughout its floors.
Let us explain.

Leah Liebergen
Cofrin Library Access Services Assistant
It’s a pretty exciting time here. We’ve been really busy over the Christmas break building mini-golf holes, and designing a mini-golf course on the floors of the Cofrin Library.

As a new fundraiser for the Development Committee we are doing a mini-golf event on Friday, the 13th of February, between 5 and 9 p.m. You can golf all 18 holes throughout the library. It’s only $5 per person. It’s a fun night out on a cold winter night.

This is our first attempt at it. Of course, with anything in the library, we started with research. We did some research. Some libraries out East have done events like this. We looked at how they designed their holes, and then kind of made it more specific to our library. We want to highlight different collections that we have. So we designed our holes around our different collections

We used the talent of our student employees, and their creativity to bring this together and we think we came up with a pretty fun course.

Jordan Kalkofen
Senior, Library Student Employee
We found anything around the library, old magazines and books and we constructed some of our own crafts from microfilm and microfiche, built a couple ramps and a couple obstacles for some pretty cool holes.

It’s a great cause for pretty much any age. I’ve practiced some of the holes myself already and I had a blast. It’s good for little kids, too, to get a little golf experience, I guess you could say. It’s pretty much like a real mini-golf course. It’s a good cause, too, to support the library and help kids come to the library more often.

Leah Liebergen
It’s really different. A lot of times, people think of libraries, especially academic libraries, as these stuffy places where everybody’s all serious and studying all the time. We really want to break that stereotype. It’s a fun event. It’s a way to get to know the library, if you’ve never been in the library or been on all the floors of the library. It’s a great chance to see the floors.

We’re going to have fun facts about our collections throughout, so you can learn something too.

Obviously, you can’t golf outside so why not come inside and golf and do some fun with the family, and help the Cofrin Library in the process, and help us with our goals in return.