I’ve been very lucky in my career to have had a wonderful mentor, who has become a good friend as well. Before moving to upstate New York, I worked in New York City for the Queens Library and found a great mentor, to whom I was introduced to when she was new to the library and looking for a librarian to coordinate the activities of her department. I worked for her for two years, and have been friends with her for more than ten. One of my projects involved organizing tours for groups visiting our library and New York- it was part outreach, part “Julie McCoy, your cruise director”.
One of the nice things about working in a large library system is the opportunity to learn about a variety of jobs that are available to librarians. Many libraries work with demographic information for planning collections, developing programming and writing grants, but few can have a staff member who works on this exclusively. Working in a large system, there is always staff turnover and librarians who move on to new jobs and responsibilities. This is less the case in the current economy, but has been the case in the recent past. I enjoyed my time at Queens and advanced through the system to the head of adult programs for a 63-branch system. I don’t think I would have thought about that position without the encouragement of my mentor.
Even with the so-called “graying of the profession”, I don’t see as much of an emphasis on mentoring that I had early in my career. It could be the nomadic existence that many librarians are forced to live, in piecing together jobs to create full-time employment. This trend began before the current economic climate, but has increased dramatically in the past few years. At a time when new grads could use the support and encouragement, mentoring is more of a “that would be nice” thought, rather than a concrete part of job training or career planning.
Thing 9 “coming soon to a computer near you”.
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