A short guide to being mentored: Tips for strong relationships

Abstract

In the past several decades, scores of books about mentoring and librarianship have been published. There are academic articles, webinars, and workshops that librarians can use to learn more about why mentoring is important and how to be a good mentor. However, in my own experience, most of these resources explore mentoring from the perspective of the mentor, not the mentee. When I graduated from library school, my colleague Andrew Walsh and I began researching mentoring in academic libraries for an article that was eventually published in College & Research Libraries. As part of the research process, I decided to join as many mentoring programs as I could find to see what I could learn from the experience. In the intervening six years, I have continued to participate in mentoring programs at the national, state, and local level, and have even started one at my own library. In total, I have participated in seven formal mentoring programs.