Call for Chapter Proposals
Academic Library Mentoring: Fostering Growth and Renewal
to be published by ACRL
Editors – Leila June Rod-Welch & Barbara E. Weeg
Proposal submission deadline: December 13, 2019
Submit proposals to: Call for Chapter Proposals -- Academic Library Mentoring
Email questions to: academiclibrarymentoring@
Editors Leila Rod-Welch and Barb Weeg invite the submission of chapter proposals for a peer-reviewed book on mentoring in college and university libraries. Mentors, mentees, and those organizing mentorships are especially encouraged to submit proposals.
The book will explore mentoring, a relationship between a senior library employee and a novice library employee or student to ease the mentee’s transition to becoming a full member of the library world and to promote professional growth. Mentoring involves coaching, guiding, informing, leading, nurturing, and challenging for career success, and is more than orienting or on-boarding an individual to a specific library. Some chapters will focus on senior library faculty guiding junior library faculty to their responsibilities of librarianship (or teaching), research, and service. Mentoring can be reciprocal and include co-mentoring in which the mentee guides the mentor in gaining new, more recent knowledge and applying it to the evolving library profession. Organizational renewal is enhanced by this exchange of new knowledge and perspectives.
Mentorships may begin formally with pairs matched by a department head or director and with a written, signed mentorship agreement, or may form and evolve informally as novice and senior faculty members come to know each other. Mentoring may be done in dyads, teams, or other configurations and communication may occur in face-to-face meetings or through various communication technologies. The myriad forms of mentoring in academic libraries offer many growth and renewal options for library personnel and their institutions.
We are seeking proposals for the topics described below and invite authors to propose other topics that are within the spirit of the book.
Section 1: Mentoring Fundamentals
- Defining mentoring
- Mentoring models
- Communication modalities and channels used
- Mentoring agreements: Documents and protocols employed
- Forming mentoring dyads: Who pairs and why
- Mentoring cohorts: Communities of continuity
- Reverse mentoring: Reinvigoration of experienced employees
- Dysfunctional mentoring relationships: Abuses of power
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion in mentoring
- Being a mentor, being a mentee
- Experienced faculty-to-novice faculty mentoring
- Assessing benefits of faculty-to-faculty mentoring: Career and library commitment
- Mentoring for the career growth of all library staff
- Opportunities and challenges of mentoring library personnel who are the only one or one of few
- holding the position in the library
Section 4: Library Faculty Mentoring of Students
- Library faculty mentoring of library science graduate students
- Library faculty mentoring of graduate students writing theses or dissertations
- Library faculty mentoring students beyond library science
- Identifying future library administrators
- Promoting leadership skills in all library personnel
Authors may address these concepts within the library setting through qualitative descriptions of mentoring experiences, reviews of the literature, original research projects, and other approaches. Documents to help readers understand the concepts being explored or the recommendations being made are encouraged, such as, step-by-step mentoring checklists, mentoring agreements, mentorship forms, or mentor training materials. Chapters may not have been published previously or submitted elsewhere simultaneously.
Submission procedure: Please submit chapter proposals of 500-700 words, a one-paragraph author’s statement including your experience with mentoring (e.g., as mentor, mentee, or both; in a formal or informal relationship, or both) for each author, and, if available, a list of previous publications to Call for Chapter Proposals -- Academic Library Mentoring by December 13, 2019.
Final manuscripts should be approximately 12-20 pages (double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman) following Chicago Manual of Style.
Timeline:
Proposals for chapters due to editors: December 13, 2019
Notification by editors of proposal acceptance: January 24, 2020
Authors submit completed chapters: May 22, 2020
Additional key dates will be sent to successful proposal writers
Dr. Leila Rod-Welch is the Outreach Services Librarian & Associate Professor and Barbara E. Weeg is a Collection Strategist Librarian & Professor, both at the University of Northern Iowa.
