by Daniel E. Feinberg
and Tamara Druash
University of North Florida
Abstract
Mentoring has been a part of every career in the modern era. It has been practiced so that a seasoned veteran in a career will give guidance to a protégé or a person new at a job. A typical example would be that a senior associate in the field would be guiding and advising a novice in the field. For academia this would usually mean a higher-ranked professor working with a novice professor to give guidance for the mentee’s professional career. However, what happens when a mentoring system is not in place at an institution, or if there are not enough tenured mentors available? In this article, two academic librarians tackled teaming up to work towards promotion, creating an informal peer-to-peer mentoring partnership. It became relevant at our institution because of this exact scenario. Suddenly, a lack of tenure, or as it is called at the university, University Librarians, caused a loss for traditional mentoring. Therefore, peer-to-peer mentoring was the best option as seen by the two librarians. It is recognized that at times it may seem strange for two associate librarians working side by side to work towards promotion. It was the option that would work best in this case. This article will discuss what informal peer-to-peer mentoring is, how two academic librarians have used it at a university to benefit their careers, and some of the challenges involved as they embarked on their mentoring journey.
Introduction
Being hired as a faculty member at a university is an exciting career move for any professional academic. However, if this is the first position that an academic librarian has had, it can be daunting. It starts a new venture in which there is uncharted territory if one is beginning as an assistant librarian, as was the case for the authors of this article. Mentoring has always been a big part of higher education institutions, and with that, academic libraries. For faculty librarians, this means promoting or advancing careers would be partially based on academic work beyond the normal scope of their everyday work. It cannot be ignored that for many librarians who come from a staff position at a previous institution, entering a faculty position could be a bit overwhelming. Librarians may feel burnout after working at a high level of stress or in a new environment (Farrell et al., 2017). Suddenly, as a faculty librarian, one is expected to take on professional development which entails service, research, and publications. Poster presentations, presentations at conferences, service in and outside of the university, as well as publishing, are all acceptable for promotion. However, there is also a need for growth. This means that one cannot engage in these types of professional development without growing as a librarian at the institution throughout the promotion practices.
The university has experienced a substantial change since 2017, in which the library administration had over three staffing changes. This in effect left university library faculty to learn new ways to progress in the promotion process and in their daily workflow. In addition, faculty changes that took place during these same times at the university resulted in losing higher-ranking faculty librarians. These two librarians came together to explore peer-to-peer mentorship and to give guidance to their promotional pathway. In effect, the typical mentoring relationship was modified to give these two librarians support by having a new system to explore the possibilities, making them mentors and mentees. Additionally, it should be mentioned that neither of these authors were set up with mentors upon hire, and the authors had asked if there was a mentoring system in place at time of contract negotiation. One could postulate, do mentoring programs typically work just because the mentor is ranked higher in academic standing? For, in a mentoring program or partnership, mentors and mentees must be open not only to share their past experiences, but also to offer constructive criticism to their protégées.
This set the stage for the university library, for the first time, to have librarians at the same rank guide each other in a peer-to-peer mentoring system. This was uncharted territory, and mentors from these librarians’ past questioned if a peer-to-peer mentoring system could work. So, it became a challenge to overcome nay-sayers to at least give the peer mentoring system a chance. This is not to say that working alone on a promotion track would not work, however as seen in most academic situations having someone to turn to is a strong motivator.
Literature Review
There is much literature touting the benefits of informal mentoring programs in academic libraries. In “Library staffing for the Future,” Crumpton looked at the importance of interpersonal mentoring as being important to academic achievement in the higher education environment (Crumpton, 2015). Not only should mentors be socially equipped but it is also important for the mentee to have a full-fledged supportive mentor ( Malecki & Bonanni, 2020). The concept of mentoring is important to think about when discussing traditional or peer-to-peer mentoring. According to Field (2001), informal mentoring “is an excellent way for professionals to leverage their expertise and serves as a mechanism to continue their own professional growth.” Kenefick and Devito (2015) state that seeking out informal mentors is important if there is no formal mentoring program in existence. Meeting new people, establishing coworker relationships, and observing the environment are key components to finding the right mentor or mentee (Kenefick AND Devito 2015). “While there is not one standard definition of mentoring, there are common ideas and concepts that underlie most understandings of the term. Using a dictionary definition, mentoring is the process of teaching, advising, and/or providing guidance to someone less experienced or younger (Hussey & Campbell-Meier, 2017).” It seems all career-driven academic faculty hope to benefit from their mentoring relationship.
According to James, Raynor and Bruno (2015) “a single definition of informal mentorship is difficult to parse, not just because it is less established in the literature, but because informal mentorship is a less specific kind of relationship than formal mentorship.” This informal mentorship is what these two authors are referring to when they talk about peer-to-peer mentoring. It is informal because there is not a structure set in place that tells mentors a prescribed way of mentoring. Even without a formal structure, librarians at the same stage of their careers each bring skills and knowledge to help guide each other. In the authors’ case, the Public Services mentor has a stronger scholarship background which the Technical Services librarian can benefit from when authoring articles and presentations. Another benefit of informal mentoring is flexibility. James, Rayner, and Bruno (2015) stated that because informal mentorship is unstructured “anyone can mentor anyone else, for any length of time, with as many people involved as desired, with meetings or encounters happening physically or virtually.” In this case, with no mentorship program in place, the situation allowed for the building of an informal mentorship program. However, in the case of peer-to-peer mentorships, it should not be ignored that other faculty in the department could always question the process. It should be noted that candidates will likely be asked if a mentoring program is in place at the academic institution and how it works, whether formal or informal.
Despite the development of informal mentoring programs when formal options do not exist, most of the literature tends to focus on mentoring for tenure-track librarians. However, mentoring for faculty not on the tenure track can be equally important, with the focus on promotion only rather than both promotion and tenure. Kenefick and Devito (2015) state that “even if not on the tenure-track, mentors should be able to explain about the review process and the expectations for any reviews.” Working in an institution where librarians have a promotion process different from the faculty at the rest of the institution can be difficult at times. It should be noted that at many institutions, traditional professors tend to look at the library faculty as different. In some cases library faculty, such as at this university, find themselves explaining how they fit in the promotion process and what defines librarians as faculty. The guidance of a mentor within the library is important to faculty librarians as the authors of this article discovered while working together. One article stated “However, in our recent research, it is clear that mentoring is often seen as a much more reciprocal relationship, where the participants benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience (Hussey & Campbell-Meier, 2017).” This confirmed that recent research agrees with what these authors have found true in the peer-to-peer mentoring relationship.
One of the alternatives to a traditional senior-junior pairing is peer-to-peer mentoring, which is defined as “a newer approach which pairs an inexperienced person with a knowledgeable individual or group of the same status” (Level, 2005). Peer-to-peer mentoring can often be dismissed as “the blind leading the blind” since it involves two people at the same stages of their career, but one of the biggest drivers in one’s career is the need for guidance. Higher education is not simply a place in which a librarian starts their first day and knows exactly what they need to do. It is not a job in which the same work is done every single day. Nor is there complete guidance through any day of the week. When librarians take their first steps onto a higher education campus it can seem overwhelming, exciting, and at the same time a mystery. Without “psychosocial mentoring” burnout in a new job can occur because of the lack of guidance and mentoring in these situations. (Farell, et al, 2017; Malecki & Bonanni, 2020, 36). “Library professionals at any stage in their career, but particularly early-career and minority librarians, have the potential to be negatively affected by psychosocial factors” (Malecki & Bonanni, 2020, 36).
It is interesting that mentorships often have groups of mentors and mentees working together. Some research suggests these programs have been successful (Harker et al., (2019). In some respects, this would seem to be a great idea; mentors and mentees, working together can aid all the faculty librarians. However, this was not an option at this university. When it comes to finding a mentor at any institution, it is a goal to not only complete work effectively and efficiently, but also in a way in which there is a professional benefit to a new colleague. Groups of mentors and mentees can bring benefits but also problems. Personalities could conflict, ways in which librarians complete their everyday work might differ greatly, and it may not help one another be more effective.
The real question became “[s]hould the focus of mentoring be on short-term goals and coaching, or should mentors be more focused on relationships and mutual learning?” (Hussey & Campbell-Meier, 2017). This is where peer-to-peer mentoring allows for “mutual learning” since mentoring a peer permits growth in a career. It could be said that in fact that the goals set by colleagues would be more effectively met if carried out consistently throughout the year. It is crucial to mention that peer mentoring involves a learning curve. Two people cannot be expected to acclimate to a mentoring system without setting guidelines. For example, it was important to make sure that the two librarians explained their jobs, how their departments were functioning, and were candid about how their day-to-day work was going. This is in some sense “mutual learning”; not only about the library that the two librarians worked in, but also providing an outlet in which the two librarians could strengthen their everyday duties and interactions with their colleagues. It cannot be ignored that in this case at this university, with all the administrative, faculty, and staff changes that have occurred, newly hired librarians needed a way to voice their ideas and concerns in a private discussion away from other colleagues. This is where peer-to-peer mentoring really bodes well for working in two different departments.
Mentoring at the University Library
At this university, library faculty can be promoted from the entry-level rank of Assistant Librarian to Associate Librarian, and from Associate Librarian to the highest rank of University Librarian. There is a timeline prescribed by the university for the promotion process. Despite not being tenure-track, library faculty promotion is a rigorous process that involves putting together an electronic dossier to show evidence of continued growth in and contributions to the field of librarianship and to the library itself. This can be challenging because of the breadth of materials that need to be collected. Also, without a mentor to help keep to deadlines, ways to build and develop one’s dossier can be challenging. Although library faculty could ask for written guidance on progress toward promotion from their supervisor, it could only be done once a year during the annual evaluation cycle. “While skeptics may view peer mentoring as ‘the blind leading the blind,’ researchers have uncovered a number of benefits in this model. Advocates suggest that peer mentoring “promotes information sharing, career planning, and job-related feedback” (Level & Mach, 2005). Additionally, not all supervisors are interested in consistent mentoring and there is no requirement to mentor junior faculty. Therefore, those who wanted mentoring from senior faculty on a consistent basis had to seek IT out for themselves.
For one of the authors authoring this paper, this was atypical. The online learning (OLL) librarian, having worked at seven educational institutions, had not heard of an institution not having a faculty mentoring system already in place. However, the idea that one would go through a faculty promotion process without guidance from a colleague who had already gone through the process seemed difficult. It is more than just completing one’s daily work, but also making an impact on the university, keeping track of what has been accomplished, and of course collecting appropriate promotion materials. Having a mentor is also a matter of not only having someone to guide one’s career, but also someone to support one’s life at work. The authors found that peer-to-peer mentoring led to also being workplace confidants. Malecki and Bonanni (2020), referring to Harker, et. al (2019), stated that “…relevance effectiveness, and sustainability, and a mentoring program must incorporate formal assessments on a continuous cycle to both mentors and proteges.” It cannot be ignored that the formal check points while building one’s promotion packet is helpful.
Previous instances of mentorship at this university had varying outcomes. In the past informal mentorship had taken place whenever a junior library faculty member asked to view a senior faculty member’s promotion dossier, or when a junior faculty member needed general advice from a senior faculty member, and it usually did not extend beyond those initial discussions. Senior library faculty and the junior librarian’s supervisor were typically willing to offer guidance when asked, but it was up to the junior librarian to establish a mentoring relationship. Faculty librarians must submit promotion materials to their virtual packet at specific times and dates. There needs to be a narrative documenting the work done within the library, your influence on the university library, committees, both in and out of the library, other service, and letters of support for your career. Faculty librarians are given one day a month as a “research day” that can be spent accomplishing these goals. However, because library faculty are expected to spend only twenty percent of their jobs on research, scholarship, and service, the monthly research day covers only a small portion of the time needed to complete these tasks. This in turn can cause faculty to be skeptical as to whether they are able to achieve this portion of their professional development.
One reason that peer-to-peer mentoring seems so different in university libraries, is that while the typical senior mentor gives overall guidance about policies, changes in the promotion process, and even the way a promotion packet is submitted can change drastically. For university librarians, this did happen in 2017 with a movement from a physical to a virtual dossier submission. Therefore, a senior librarian did not have any idea how to use this packet submission since this is not the way they submitted their promotion packet. Current experience from a peer mentor who was a year ahead of the other librarian helped to clarify what to expect and what to include. From the first day of working at the university, the ideas of documenting one’s work, participating in committees, publishing, etc., can seem overwhelming. One of the two authors was one of the first to handle a virtual dossier submission and the other had his peer mentor’s guidance a year later. In both cases, it seemed to be a task that could cause overwhelming emotional burnout.
Why Choose Informal Peer-to-Peer Mentorship
The authors of this article decided it would be beneficial to mentor each other for many reasons. Primarily, both are at the same stage of their careers, but they are also from different library departments, which brings different perspectives to the table. Once a month, they schedule a meeting to discuss progress toward promotion in scholarship, research, and service. It has been beneficial that the authors worked together since the OLL was hired at the university. In effect, the two of the associate librarians were on good terms from the beginning of their mentoring. They felt that they also needed to be available to openly discuss and strategize aspects of their day-to-day work, and to bounce ideas off each other on how to best tackle their everyday careers.
Since one mentor works in the Public Services department and the other works in the Technical Services department, it has been beneficial to hear the perspective of a colleague who has contrasting goals and work in their different departments. For example, the librarian in the Technical Services department has benefited from their Public Services peer’s perspective when working on library outreach and scholarship. Mentoring within two different departments might seem odd, but it has allowed one of the authors to get a better understanding of the two departments. Having been at the university longer, the Technical Services librarian has understood many of the changes that have occurred in the library and the library administration.
As with any mentoring relationship, there can be challenges that each mentor/mentee must work through to start seeing positive results. Being in departments that were run differently and had different goals and objectives was problematic, as was finding a common time to meet since public services librarians’ schedules included teaching, holding public events, and participating in outreach events. The technical services librarian maintained departmental meetings along with tasks that she had to work on regularly.
When there is a peer-to-peer mentoring system in place, there are always chances for issues to arise. However, for these two Associate University librarians, there was nothing to lose since there were no other mentors that fit with an informal program. This was something that both peers were concerned about because it was technically uncharted territory. However, the initial peer-to-peer mentor system seemed new, refreshing, and something that has more guidance than past mentorships. The Resource Description Librarian had already gone through the assistant to associate librarian promotion prior to the OLL being brought on at this university. So, as she had spent two years at the associate librarian rank, it seemed a good fit. Admittedly, when the two authors came up with the idea of mentoring each other, it was unknown territory for them. They would have to try to develop a mentoring system that would work for both despite working in different departments. This gave them a way to have outlets for conversation about their daily work, their problems, and a way to discuss issues that came up. They could also give advice from a more subjective perspective than any of our direct colleagues could.
The Future of Mentoring at University
Whether there will be a formal mentoring system established at the Library at this university is unknown. If this university is like other institutions, eventually a mentoring program will develop. However, the librarians are not discouraged. So, one may consider why these two librarians authored this article? Yes, there are articles that have discussed mentoring programs and even peer mentoring in general, but the two authors did not have anyone to guide them in the best ways to mentor each other. In all honesty, they did not know if their goal of peer-to-peer mentoring would be a positive or negative experience. However, they took the opportunity to give peer-to-peer mentoring a chance. The ongoing year of touching base of these two librarians gave them guidance through the good times, the confusing times, during decisions that they made both in their promotion process, and IN their everyday work.
Though coming from different educational backgrounds and career paths, peer mentors can find continual solace in knowing that they have each other to turn to as colleagues and friends at work to guide them through their path.
References
Crumpton, M. A. (2015). The emotionally intelligent mentor. In S. S. Hines & M. Simmons (Eds.), Library staffing for the future. 10.1108/S0732-067120150000034002
Farrell, B., Alabi, J., Whaley, P., & Jenda, C. (2017). Addressing psychosocial factors with library mentoring. Portal: Libraries and the Academy 17(1), 51–69. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2017.0004.
Field, J. (2001). Mentoring: A natural act for information professionals? New Library World 102 (7-8), 269-273. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800110400750
Harker, K., O’Toole, E., Keshmiripour, S., McIntosh, M., & Sassen, C. (2019). Mixed-methods assessment of a mentoring program. Journal of Library Administration, 59(8), 873-902. 10.1080/01930826.2019.1661745
Hussey, L. K., & Campbell-Meier, J. (2017). Is there a mentoring culture within the LIS profession? Journal of Library Administration, 57(5), 500-516. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2017.1326723
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Level, A. V., & Mach, M. (2004). Peer mentoring: One institution’s approach to mentoring academic librarians. Library Management, 10.1108/01435120410609725