Miniture Golf and Vanishing Breed Shirt

Miniature Golf in the Library.  ISU's Eli M. Oboler Library

Last weekend we hosted a miniature golf event in the library.  It seemed that not as many people came to the event.  We may need to do better at advertising our event and inviting people personally or via Facebook to the event.  Proceeds of the event go to our book budget account.  This event is sponsored by our Friends of the Oboler Library group, which is commonly known as FOOLs.  It's a fun name and one with meaning behind it as well, referencing the fools in medieval times that often spoke the truth in the presence of the king--the only one who could do so without negative consequences.

Those who volunteered could wear and keep a free shirt with the phrase "Save a Vanishing Breed."  The image of a reader with a book appears on the shirt.  Personally, I do not like this, because I think that there are many readers today--that reading is not a rare event in modern society.  However, I am a librarian surrounded by readers.  As a previous experience in a library workshop attests, it may not be so uncommon for a half of any group of college freshmen to have never looked up a book in a library before, which supports the argument that fewer and fewer individuals may be reading extensively.

Question 10 of a recent survey I gave to another class indicates that many college students struggle reading scholarly research, even in upper division courses.  I should look this up, but I remember seeing somewhere that an educational organization or some association identified reading as the most important skill of the 21st century.  It is a fundamental skill.