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Library Mentoring Program

This guide provides tools, templates, and resources to help participants in the UNT Libraries' Mentoring Program make the most of their mentoring experience.

Mentor Guide: Supporting Growth Through Mentoring

Mentoring offers an opportunity to share your experiences, foster growth, and contribute to the professional development of others. As a mentor, you’ll play a pivotal role in guiding, encouraging, and challenging your mentee as they navigate their journey in academic librarianship. Effective mentoring creates a space for both mentor and mentee to learn and grow together.

Getting Started

Before beginning your mentoring partnership, take time to reflect on your goals and approach as a mentor. The most successful relationships begin with clarity, empathy, and intentionality.

Prepare for Your First Meeting:

  • Reflect on your experiences. Consider what lessons, insights, or stories might be valuable to share.
  • Clarify your role. You are not expected to have all the answers - focus on asking good questions and helping your mentee find their own path.
  • Set expectations together. Discuss communication preferences, frequency of meetings, and boundaries early on.
  • Review your mentee’s goals. Ask about their aspirations and what success looks like for them.
  • Be ready to listen. Your mentee may be exploring uncertainty; create a welcoming and judgment-free space.
  • Ask questions. Examples include:
    • “What inspired you to seek out a mentor?”
    • “What areas of your work or career would you like to focus on this year?”
    • “How can I best support you?”

Starting strong with openness and structure helps build the foundation for a meaningful and productive relationship.

Your Role as a Mentor

A mentor empowers their mentee to develop confidence, insight, and professional identity. Effective mentors are approachable, reflective, and supportive guides who balance sharing expertise with fostering independence.

Key Practices:

  • Be available: Commit to consistent meetings and timely communication.
  • Listen actively: Allow space for your mentee to explore challenges before offering advice.
  • Guide, don’t direct: Encourage critical thinking rather than prescribing solutions.
  • Model professionalism: Demonstrate integrity, inclusiveness, and respect.
  • Provide constructive feedback: Frame advice in ways that promote growth and self-reflection.
  • Encourage reflection: Ask questions that prompt your mentee to analyze progress and lessons learned.
  • Celebrate achievements: Acknowledge growth and milestones throughout the mentoring journey.
  • Keep learning: Mentoring is reciprocal - you’ll often gain new perspectives and skills through the process.

Building a Strong Mentoring Relationship (as a Mentor)

Successful mentoring relationships thrive when mentors foster trust, curiosity, and respect. Your role is to create an environment where your mentee feels supported, challenged, and empowered to grow.

Build Trust and Rapport

  • Be transparent about your availability, expectations, and communication style.
  • Follow through on commitments and respect confidentiality.
  • Acknowledge differences in experience or background and approach the relationship with humility.

Communicate Authentically

  • Ask open-ended questions that encourage reflection and discussion.
  • Share your own challenges and lessons learned to normalize imperfection and growth.
  • Check in regularly on whether your mentee feels their goals and needs are being met.

Foster Growth and Reflection

  • Encourage experimentation and independent problem-solving.
  • Help your mentee reframe setbacks as opportunities for learning.
  • Support goal-setting and revisit those goals as the relationship evolves.

Cultivate Mutual Respect

  • Value your mentee’s unique strengths and experiences.
  • Recognize the two-way nature of mentoring—mentors also learn and evolve.
  • Express appreciation for your mentee’s engagement and openness.

Mentoring Activities in Practice

Mentoring is most impactful when it extends beyond conversation into collaborative, experiential learning. Purposeful activities create opportunities for both mentors and mentees to explore ideas in practice, share insights, and build confidence in real-world contexts. Whether you’re guiding or learning, these activities strengthen mutual understanding and professional growth.

Librarianship

  • Review professional documents (e.g., CVs, annual reviews, dossiers) together and discuss ways to communicate strengths and achievements.
  • Observe each other’s work environments, meetings, or instruction sessions to understand different roles and workflows within the library.
  • Share and compare tools, systems, or approaches that support productivity, instruction, research, and/or service.
  • Collaboratively develop a professional development plan aligned with goals, skills, and areas for growth.
  • Create a visual map of career goals and the skills or experiences needed to achieve them.

Scholarship

  • Co-author or co-present on a shared topic of interest.
  • Attend a professional webinar or conference session together and discuss takeaways or applications.
  • Review abstracts, proposals, or manuscripts and exchange constructive feedback.
  • Explore strategies for publishing, peer review, and scholarly communication.
  • Recommend and discuss articles or authors that inspire your professional inquiry.

Service & Leadership

  • Discuss the role of service and leadership in career development and well-being.
  • Reflect on personal leadership styles and how to lead effectively from any position.
  • Share experiences or strategies for managing teams, navigating challenges, and building consensus.
  • Participate in a committee meeting or project together to observe leadership in context.
  • Identify opportunities for emerging leadership (such as small roles or short-term projects) to build experience and confidence.

Further Reading for Mentors

Academic Library Mentoring: Fostering Growth and Renewal: Volume 2: Mentoring of Library Faculty and Librarians

Examines mentorship models, skills, and programs that support tenure, career growth, and psychosocial well-being, while addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion through research, assessments, and case studies.

Mentoring in Librarianship

Brings together insights from librarians and LIS professionals across all sectors to offer practical guidance, real-world experiences, and proven strategies for building effective mentoring relationships and programs that support librarians at every career stage.

Librarian As Mentor

Highlights how mentoring fosters recruitment, retention, and development of a diverse library workforce, featuring insights from 14 librarians who share the benefits of serving as both mentors and mentees.

The Mentor's Guide

Offers practical tools and insightful guidance for navigating every stage of the mentoring process, helping mentors create meaningful and effective learning relationships.

Mentoring 101

Provides a concise, practical guide to the art of mentoring, offering step-by-step advice on choosing mentees, fostering growth, and building a lasting legacy through sharing knowledge and leadership.

Good Mentoring

Provides an in-depth exploration of how mentors impart not only knowledge and skills but also the values that inspire ethical, high-quality, and purposeful professional practice.

On Being a Mentor

Serves as a comprehensive guide for higher education faculty, offering strategies, best practices, and actionable advice for effectively mentoring students and junior colleagues.

Staff Development Strategies That Work!

Highlights strategies and best practices for developing new librarians into effective leaders, showcasing real experiences, mentoring programs, and training approaches that foster professional growth, leadership skills, and long-term engagement within the library community.

Mentoring Processes in Higher Education

Explores diverse forms of mentoring across academia, highlighting effective practices, mutual benefits, and real-life examples that show how mentoring fosters professional growth, collaboration, and a continual cycle of support among faculty, students, and colleagues.

Faculty Mentoring: A Practical Manual for Mentors, Mentees, Administrators, and Faculty Developers

Offers comprehensive guidance for creating and sustaining faculty mentoring programs, demonstrating how structured mentoring enhances recruitment, retention, and integration of new faculty while providing step-by-step models and resources for mentors, mentees, and administrators.

Mentoring As Transformative Practice: Supporting Student and Faculty Diversity

Explores how effective mentorship fosters the advancement of women and people of color in academia, offering research-based insights, real-life examples, and actionable strategies for creating inclusive, supportive, and transformative mentoring environments across higher education.

A Pocket Guide to Mentoring Higher Education Faculty

Supports senior faculty and administrators in mentoring colleagues across ranks and appointment types, offering accessible, case-based strategies for addressing challenges such as discrimination and departmental conflict while promoting effective, low-cost mentoring practices in higher education.