ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

In the news

We all know that recruiting to the profession is a big issue in academic and research librarianship, and mentoring new librarians is an important aspect of retaining those that join our ranks. However, it can sometimes be difficult to develop a recruitment and retention plan or to even know where to begin. This issue includes several articles that discuss recruitment and retention and present ideas and examples that can help you jump-start your efforts.

In “Got a secret? Pass it on …Lynn Chmelir shares ways that academic librarians can mentor new librarians into the profession. She points out that making connections across campus, particularly with career services departments, and reaching out to those already engaged in some level of library work, such as paraprofessional and student library workers, are excellent ways to tap new talent.

Charlene Kellsey approaches the recruitment issue from the perspective of specialization. Noting the difficulty in hiring librarians with foreign language expertise, she recommends ways to seek out individuals with these skills and spread the word that academic and research librarianship is a career for them (“Crisis in foreign language expertise in research libraries”).

In “Mentoring untenured librarians,” three tenure-track librarians at Oakland University write about their informal mentoring group, led by the associate dean of the library, and provide guidelines on how to be a successful leader of such a group, from the perspective of those being mentored.

Also in this issue, librarians from Brigham Young University share the results of a survey of events geared towards advancing awareness of the scholarly communication crisis (“Widespread academic efforts address the scholarly communication crisis”). A summary of the survey findings will also be shared at the ACRL/SPARC Forum at the ALA Annual Conference.

Complete ACRL results from the 2003 election are included as well. Congratulations to the winners.

—Stephanie Orphan, Editor-in-chief sorphan@ala.org