Abstract
The paper focused on mentoring in academic libraries with emphasis on the types and its
benefits. The purpose of this paper is to assemble selected literature reports on mentoring, types
and benefits of mentoring. The researchers conducted a review of existing related literature on
academic libraries through library research. Newly recruited academic librarians and pre-tenured
librarians need the guidance, supervision and the coaching of the highly experienced and tenure-
track librarians to grow professionally in their chosen career, improve in job performance and to
prepare them for future leadership. The paper identifies and discusses the types of mentoring in
academic libraries. The researchers also highlighted the benefits of mentoring which include:
nurturing of occupational identity towards career goal attainment, enhance communication and
productivity, improves retention and reduces turnover intention, of librarians and development of
new librarians, plays transitional role of assisting librarians to navigate among others. The paper
further identifies the challenges of mentoring in academic libraries in Nigeria as comprising;
unrealistic expectations and assumptions, lack of commitment by mentees or mentors, poor
internet connection during e-mentoring among others. The paper concludes that despite the
numerous literature that exists on this subject, mentoring programmes in academic libraries have
been inadequately studied by many researchers. Ongoing investigation on other areas of
mentorship are required to determine the importance of mentoring programmes in the career
development of academic librarians.
Keywords: Mentoring, mentee, mentor, mentoring programmes and academic libraries.
Publication Date: 2024-01-28