Effective mentoring is essential to the growth and success of librarianship in all types of library. This paper considers the possibilities for fostering mentoring activities among early career librarians, mid-career transitional librarians, and non-professional library workers. First, the paper describes existing studies to illuminate the urgency of mentoring activities to address the diminishing number of librarians and changing librarianship in the workforce as well as to support ongoing staffi ng needs. Secondly, it documents the academic library and professional organizations' typical mentoring activities including their extensiveness and limits. The paper focuses on academic librarians in a university setting. Thirdly, the article describes one librarian's mentoring activities to support and encourage beginning librarians to advance their careers in library and information science, to become active members of professional associations and to think about possible leadership roles. The paper concludes with (a) an account of how the author's own mentoring/mentee roles have infl uenced her professional direction and (b) linking effective mentoring to library leadership. It demonstrates how the effective mentor will help the mentee not only to navigate the maze of professional organizations and committees, but also to achieve a more global understanding of the platform of libraries without borders.

Faculty status, tenure, and professional identity have been long-lasting issues for academic librarians for nearly forty years, yet there is little agreement on the benefits of faculty status. This paper examines faculty status and tenure for academic librarians and presents the results of a survey inquiry into professional identity, current and expected roles, views on faculty status and tenure, and personnel status of academic librarians in the New England area. The study affirms that 45 percent of the respondents have some combination of faculty status, tenure status, and faculty plus tenure status, and that 65 percent of academic librarians do not have tenure. While all academic librarians perceive strong professional development support, only those with faculty status and tenure (and librarians involved with new and emerging areas of study) see themselves having more career advancement and development opportunities. This research concludes that librarians’ professional identities are closely matched with five traditional roles. Four new or emerging roles, which may be referred to as “educator,” “teacher,” “information professional,” and “facilitator of learning,” reveal significant differences across personnel status.

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Librarians have embraced the critical role mentoring can play in the professional growth, socialization and leadership development for academic libraries. The author sought to understand mentoring experiences in career and professional development and psychosocial functions as well as barriers to entering mentoring relationships in New England academic libraries. Surveys sent to academic librarians at Association of College and Research Libraries/New England Chapter News Group invited them to share their experiences with mentoring relationships and its benefits. The study suggests that few structured formal mentoring programs from their own libraries exist for librarians outside of professional associations’ mentoring programs. Additionally, results suggest that the mentoring program antecedents of library organizational culture, prior positive mentoring experience are the main influencing factors for successful implementation of mentoring programs.

insights-library-archivaland-information-sciences.