Mentor/Mentee 101: Developing a Career Essential Relationship

ALA’s New Member Roundtable (NMRT) posts monthly discussion topics on their listserv. This month’s topic is on mentorships. Here is the link to join the listserv–I don’t think you need to be an ALA member to join the NMRT listserv:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/nmrt/news/nmrtmailinglists.cfm

Here’s this month’s discussion topic–I thought there were some good questions:


My name is Tricia Dean; Esther Giezendanner and I I will be co-leading this month’s discussion with . Our topic this month is Mentor/Mentee 101: Developing a Career Essential Relationship. For individuals new to the profession, having a mentor can be a huge benefit. On the flip side, mentoring can be a great opportunity to share skills and expertise and connect with a newer colleague who may bring in a fresh perspective. How do we develop solid mentoring relationships that strengthen the individual participants and the profession as a whole?

Here are a few questions to get us started:
-What are some reasonable expectations for mentors and mentees?
-Are there any pitfalls that should be avoided when starting a new mentoring relationship?
-What are the benefits you’ve gained from having a mentor, or what benefits would you hope to gain from having a mentoring relationship?
-Various subdivisions of ALA and some libraries offer formal mentoring programs. What are the advantages and drawbacks of going this route?
If you’ve been in one of these programs what are the pluses and what do you think might have been better in an informal relationship?
-If none of the formal mentoring programs fit an individual’s needs, how might he/she find a mentor informally?

Looking forward to a great discussion with you,
Esther & Tricia

Upcoming events

There won’t be a December FLIP meeting, but (as mentioned in a previous post) we are planning a movie night here in the Consortium Library.  Mark your calendar for Friday, December 18 (probably starting around 7:30 p.m.).  No final decision has been made on the flick, so if you’ve got a favorite, please add your suggestion(s) in a comment!

Also, we are starting a book club! The first selection is Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger. We plan to meet sometime around the end of January or beginning of February to discuss, so start reading (or add it to your Christmas list) now. More details coming soon…

Neither of these events are limited to only those that attend FLIP meetings.  If you are interested in hanging out, chit-chat, and/or library fun, please come!

Book club? Movie night?

At the last FLIP meeting, we talked about all kinds of things, as we are wont to do, but perhaps the two most fun were the ideas of a FLIP Book Club (not a flip-book club) and a Library Movie Night. The book club could be anything, really, and if we wanted to move away from library-themed books, we could actually extend it out to patrons. Maybe we could do something for The Whale and the Supercomputer. But it could also be a professional development kind of thing, internally. (Coral’s suggestion: Everything is Miscellaneous.)

The Movie Night could be some kind of library-themed movie–I hear this has been done before?–in 307, in the evening, with people throwing in for pizza or something. It would be pretty informal, and “library-themed” can mean anything from “Party Girl” to “Desk Set” to a documentary about libraries. Ideas are welcome!

Do either of these thoughts interest you, though? If so, comment!

EBSCO offers five scholarships to attend 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting

EBSCO offers five scholarships to attend 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting
CHICAGO – The American Library Association (ALA) and EBSCO are partnering to offer five scholarships for librarians to attend the 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston. The meeting takes place Jan. 15-19, 2010, and offers an opportunity for continuing education, meetings and interaction with colleagues.
Each EBSCO scholarship will be in the amount of $1,500, and one of the five scholarships will be awarded to a first-time conference attendee. The scholarship money is to be used for conference registration, travel and expenses.
Deadline for entry is Nov. 23, 2009, and the application information can be found at:

http://www.ala.org/ala/awardsgrants/awardsrecords/ebscosponsorship/ebscosponsorship.cfm


Scholarship recipients will be notified no later than Dec. 15, 2009.

To apply, candidates must complete the application criteria and submit an essay that answers the following question: “What do you believe to be the biggest challenge in managing electronic resources in libraries today, and what solutions do you envision?” Essays and applications will be judged by a jury designated by ALA.

About EBSCO
EBSCO is the world’s premier full-service provider of information, offering a portfolio of services that spans the realm of print and electronic subscription access and management, research databases and more. The company’s e-resource renewal and management tools help librarians accomplish in hours what once took weeks. For more information, please visit www.ebsco.com .
Contact: Cheryl Malden
ALA Governance Office
(312) 280-3247
cmalden@ala.org

American Library Association
American Library Association

Getting involved with ACRL

Thought this might be of interest. ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) is a division of ALA.

Subject: Upcoming ACRL OnPoint Chat: Getting Involved With ACRL

November 12, 2009: Getting Involved With ACRL (10:00 a.m. Pacific | 11:00 a.m. Mountain | 12:00 p.m. Central | 1:00 p.m.

Eastern)

In this discussion, ACRL Vice-President Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe and Executive Director Mary Ellen Davis will answer your questions about the wide variety of ways to make the most of your membership by getting involved in ACRL. Learn how and when committee appointments are made along with other ways you can become more active in the ACRL community and contribute to the profession.

ACRL OnPoint is a live series of informal monthly chat sessions that provide the opportunity to connect with colleagues and experts to discuss an issue of the day in academic and research librarianship. All ACRL OnPoint chats are free, open to the public, and require no registration. Meebo chat rooms have a limit of 80 total participants.  Due to this restriction, ACRL OnPoint discussions will be delivered on a first-come-first-served basis. Complete details and login information are available on the ACRL Website at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/events/onpoint/index.cfm

Netflix of Academic Journals?

Ran across this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Interesting implications–rented articles can not be downloaded, printed or shared. They do have a free trial–I might have to try it out.

The Netflix of Academic Journals Opens Shop

By Ben Terris

By opening the largest online rental service for scientific, technical, and research journals, the company Deep Dyve is hoping to do for academic publications what Netflix has done for movies: make them easily accessible and inexpensive for everyone.

The Web site has been an academic-journal search engine since 2005 and unveiled its rental program this week. Now anyone can “rent” an article—which means you can view it on your computer without ownership rights or printing capabilities—for as little as 99 cents for 24 hours. Users can also subscribe for monthly passes. Currently the site has 30 million articles from various peer-reviewed journals.

William Park, chief executive of Deep Dyve, says the model will not only allow more people to read articles they might otherwise not see, but will actually encourage users to purchase more content from journals. He says that now, only about 0.2 percent of people visiting journal Web sites go on to buy articles, because they don’t know exactly what they are getting from just a title and an abstract.

“Nobody would buy a car without at least evaluating it first,” Mr. Park says. “The same is true for anything, whether it’s a dollar or $10,000.”

Mr. Park says that Deep Dyve has revenue-sharing partnerships with hundreds of publications (about 80 percent of which are scientific) and hopes to expand to more of the humanities within the coming months.

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-Netflix-of-Academic/8648/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en