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Purpose: Mentorship is crucial to the success and accomplishment of librarianship in the contemporary era. This paper aims to investigate the need for mentorship and challenges besetting mentorship in librarianship with specific focus on academic libraries. Design/methodology/approach: Descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population of the study was 1,214 librarians in 102 academic libraries in Southern Nigeria. Total enumeration sampling technique was adopted for the study. Findings: It was reflected that mentorship, though beset by a number of challenges, is a necessity in librarianship. The hypotheses tested revealed that there is significant relationship between the need for mentorship and the types of mentorship adopted in academic libraries, and that there is no significant difference between the need for mentorship by male and female librarians. Practical implications: This study affirmed that it is through mentorship that librarians can meet their job demands. Mentorship should therefore be stimulated to bolster the professional and intellectual development of the librarians. The mentees should be carried along in mentorship partnership selection process, and training should be organized for mentors and mentees on mentorship. Social implications: The interaction of librarians in the course of mentoring can facilitate work cohesion and enhanced job performance. Originality/value: The needs for and challenges besetting mentorship in librarianship have been explored by collecting data directly from the librarians. The cloistered nature of librarianship, given the changing nature of the profession owing to massive deployment of Information and Communication Technology in the performance of library operations, means that mentorship should be encouraged in the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]