Mentoring in academic libraries implies a belief in the future of library employees, systems, the profession, and the principles that libraries uphold. It signifies a commitment to the broader institution and to higher education’s values of exploration, discovery, critical examination, and knowledge generation.
Academic Library Mentoring: Fostering Growth and Renewal presents a cross-section of mentoring thought and practice in college and university libraries, including mentoring definitions, practice fundamentals, models, program development, surveys, and analysis. Across three volumes, it explores library mentoring programs and the lived experiences of library faculty, librarians, library staff members, graduate library and information science students, and library student employees.
Volume 1, Fundamentals and Controversies, details effective mentoring skills and behaviors, mentoring models, dysfunctional mentoring relationships, conflicts of interest in mentoring, and, through a feminist lens, power differentials in mentoring. Chapters on diversity, equity, and inclusion call for library personnel to understand the exclusion some experience in the profession and to implement more inclusive mentoring practices.
Mentoring of Library Faculty and Librarians, Volume 2, explores mentorship skills, models, purposes and issues, and program development. Mentoring purposes include support for the pursuit of tenure and promotion, other career goals, and psychosocial concerns. Issues incorporate understanding and addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion in mentoring. Chapter methodologies include surveys, program assessments, analysis of practices against standards, case studies of mentor and mentee lived experiences, and case studies of libraries and affiliated entities.
In Volume 3, Mentoring of Students and Staff, we hear the voices of library science students and library student employees as they describe their library school and library employment mentoring experiences. Also presented are mentoring programs for recruiting individuals to the profession, practices supporting all library employees regardless of formal employee classification, and methods for enhancing the skills of consortial members. The volume ends with a look to the future of mentoring and organizational development and with a tool any library employee at any career stage can use in forming their own mentoring constellation.
Intentional, effective, committed mentorships can help mentees understand their roles and develop their identities as librarians, library workers, or library science students. Mentorships also help mentees understand and meet performance standards, broaden their skills, shift to new specializations, and discern options for contributing to the larger institution and the profession. Through mentoring, mentors may be invigorated by contributing to the growth of mentees and by encountering ideas and approaches different from their own. Academic Library Mentoring: Fostering Growth and Renewal addresses the many dimensions of contemporary academic library mentoring and how best to engage in inclusive, effective mentoring.
