At the begin­ning of the year, I high­lighted a library fundraiser that raised $10,000 by putting a mini golf course in the stacks. Recently, I had the plea­sure of talk­ing with Rick Bolton, the guy behind the fundraiser, which is when I learned that he’s taken his orig­i­nal idea and expanded on it to cre­ate a 501©(3) orga­ni­za­tion that can work with libraries across the country.

“Yes, we really will turn your library into an amaz­ing minia­ture golf course for a day. We work with pub­lic, school, and aca­d­e­mic libraries seek­ing a fundrais­ing event that will also draw new patrons to the library and pro­vide for a fun com­mu­nity event. We have hosted sev­eral events in Con­necti­cut and Mass­a­chu­setts over the last few years and have inspired and coached other events across the country.”

I think it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing idea, espe­cially when you hear Rick talk about it. In fact, the one thing that’s miss­ing from the web­site is Rick’s pas­sion and enthu­si­asm for this project, which is really just a labor of love for him (it’s not his pri­mary business).

The basic idea is that the Library Mini Golf non­profit group will cre­ate a minia­ture golf course for a library, 80% of which is a stan­dard course. The indi­vid­ual holes are cre­ated in such a way that they can be set up and taken down quickly, and they can be folded down for easy stor­age. LMG plans to work with col­lege design school stu­dents to cre­ate the other, unique 20% of the course, which might include repli­cas of local build­ings or other items of inter­est to the com­mu­nity. For exam­ple, t’s easy to imag­ine a Chicago ver­sion with a mini Sears Tower and Han­cock Build­ing. (Myself, I’d love to see a hole with kitchen uten­sils as obsta­cles in the 641.5 stacks.)

The library can then sched­ule an event and solicit local spon­sors for each hole. On the big day, LMG will help the library set up the course around the stacks or wher­ever else you want it, and then peo­ple come in and play. Ulti­mately, Rick would like to see addi­tional spon­sors put money towards a col­lege schol­ar­ship for the kid that wins a high school tour­na­ment held in the library. He esti­mates a library can raise a min­i­mum of $10,000 in just one day for this type of event.

I can see towns com­pet­ing against each other for best golf score, and maybe we could even have a national tour­na­ment the way we’re doing a videogame one for National Gam­ing Day on Novem­ber 15. Rick told me he can make some spe­cialty course holes, too. For exam­ple, he can have the hole start on one level and fin­ish on another or start in one row of stacks and fin­ish in another. I can’t wait to see one of these setups for myself, but the pos­si­bil­i­ties are intrigu­ing, and I’m sure librar­i­ans will come up with other great ideas.

The LMG is cur­rently work­ing with other libraries on the east coast, but they’ve already done this with mid­west­ern libraries and even an aca­d­e­mic one. I think we’ll start see­ing some tes­ti­mo­ni­als appear on the LMG site as it evolves (it just launched and they’re still adding con­tent), but there are also sev­eral arti­cles about the fundrais­ers, such as this one that took place at Wash­burn Uni­ver­sity in Kansas and the pos­i­tive response from the community.

My hope is to arrange for one of Rick’s courses to be set up at the Gam­ing, Learn­ing, and Libraries Sym­po­sium in Novem­ber so that atten­dees can play for them­selves and learn more about the ser­vice. In the mean­time, inter­ested libraries can con­tact Rick to learn more or dis­cuss hold­ing an event. Per­son­ally, I’d love to see my home library do one of these (hint, hint).