ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Mentorship Rocks!... If Done Right

Academic mentorship is a professional development strategy that enables fledging professionals to take advantage of the skills and expertise of the senior members for professional growth. Drawing upon personal experience, the speaker shares his success story of an academic mentorship program implemented in an academic health science library and argues for academic mentorship to be widely adopted in science libraries. This talk first reviews the literature on the concept of mentoring in an academic setting, and then describes the background, rationale, methods and results of the mentorship programs the author has experienced. Lastly, based upon an analysis of several surveys and studies on coping skills for quality job performance of health sciences reference librarians, the speech discusses mentorship as one effective means to ease a new medical reference librarian’s transition from his/her pre-service experience to the professional world of medical librarianship. It calls on other sciences librarians to consider developing their own mentorship programs to promote their professional development and personal growth.