Effective Mentoring.

Effective Mentoring is essential to the growth and success of librarianship in all types of libraries. 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 staffing needs. Second, it documents the academic library and professional organization's typical mentoring activities including its extensiveness and limits. The paper focuses on academic librarians in a university setting. Third, this 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) the author describing how her own mentoring/mentee roles have influenced her professional direction and b) linking effective mentoring to library leadership. It demonstrates how the effective mentor will help the mentee navigate not only the maze of professional organizations and committees, but also to achieve a more global understanding of the platform of libraries without borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]