On mentoring

extract from CILIP's website

   

 I have been a member of CILIP for a while now. And I so liked the work done by my mentor at the time of my chartership that I also decided to become a mentor.

     I have to admit I'm not a five stars mentor: I have not had, over the years, many candidates, and quite a few have only met me once and given up, and some given up before even meeting me. Perhaps people are more choosy these days with the high cost of life (and library studies!) and all that.

     Anyway, I have to admit that my experience, with the few courageous mentees who stayed, has been, and still is, wonderful. Sometimes I even wonder: am I getting more from them than them from me?
     I sincerely hope not! but a lot of the documents the mentees send me, in particular visits to non-academic libraries, are helping me getting up to date with the latest librarianship information. As a one-person library (think musician in the street who plays all the instruments at the same time...) it can be very tricky to get out of the library.
Of course, I manage this by having ERASMUS trainees (and I'm happy to see that over the years, we have had a few!) but I cannot leave the library for too long.

I'm writing this because my current mentee (no name given we are English, or at least you are!) is sending me wonderful documentations about the courses and talks she went to, with her added comments.
I will eventually tell her that not everything needs to go into the Chartership application, but it is great to then have so much to choose from!

And for me, so much good stuff to read from!

Now I must be good and try to guide her/him as much as I can. Enough of this writing!