Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
Summer 12-6-2021
Abstract
Mentoring is one of the approaches of training and developing people, where a more experienced persons (mentors) share their vast accumulated understanding and experience with the less experienced persons (mentees, protégés). Mentoring is crucial to the success, competency, leadership development and accomplishment of a career in librarianship in contemporary era. This paper aims to investigate the impact of mentoring on skill competency, career growth and leadership development of library and information science professionals and the challenges besetting mentoring in librarianship with specific focus on acaademic libraries in Osun and Ondo States, Nigeria. This study affirms that through mentoring librarians can meet their job demands. Mentoring should therefore be stimulated to boost the professional and administrative skills of librarians. Four objectives and four research questions guided this study. The population for the study comprises librarians cum library officers totaling 750 from academic libraries in Osun and Ondo States, Nigeria. Three hundred respondents from the population with more than six years work experience irrespective of gender were selected using the simple random probability sampling technique. The collection of data was through a questionnaire – “Mentoring, An essential tool for skill acquisition, leadership development and career growth in library and information science profession”. The instrument’s reliability coefficient was 0.87 using Cronbach Alpha. The data was analyzed using tables, simple percentages and mean. The results indicate that one-on-one mentoring and role model are the most popular methods that are used to mentor newly recruited library staff. The study establishes that through mentoring young graduate librarians acquire competency, career growth, job satisfaction, leadership qualities and promotes the image of the profession. The problems facing mentoring include compatibility of mentors and mentees, mentees’ insubordination, and reluctance of the old experienced workforce to groom the younger ones and their inadvertently attitude of taking undue advantage of the mentees. The study recommend that mentors should be patient with the mentees and the mentees to develop positive attitude towards mentoring in order to have a successful and fulfilling career.