NASIG Newsletter

COMMITTEE ANNUAL REPORT
MENTORING GROUP
Gracemary Smulewitz (Rutgers University Libraries) and Dana Walker (University of Georgia Libraries), co-chairs
Kim Maxwell, board liaison 2008/09; Jill Emery, board liaison, 2009/10

June 2009

The Mentoring Group conducted the Mentoring Program for the annual NASIG conference in June 2009.  The Mentor/First Timers Reception was held at the Renaissance Asheville Hotel and was well attended.  We had 38 mentees sign up for the program.

Evaluations of the program have not been gathered.  Original mentoring forms were inadvertently lost during migration from the old NASIG website to the new NASIG website.  Thanks to the help of members of the Electronics Communication Committee we were able to get new mentoring sign up forms posted to the NASIG website.  We are in the process of constructing a new Mentoring Program evaluation form.

The Mentoring Group also received a request from the board to create a year-long mentoring program and implementation recommendations.  Below is the outline of our implementation recommendations.

The Mentoring Group has not acted on any of these implementation recommendations at this point in time.  We plan to work with our new board liaison, Jill Emery, to move forward on these recommendations.

IMPLEMENTATION RECOMMENDATIONS

• We recommend that NASIG create a NASIG Mentoring Group on Facebook to conduct ongoing mentoring discussion and schedule discussion forums on specific topics.  NASIG, perhaps the Mentoring Committee in collaboration with the Continuing Education Committee, would determine what core topics should be offered in forums and also establish the sequencing of the topics.  There is currently a NASIG group on Facebook with 134 members.
• We also think ongoing, one-on-one mentoring relationships should be investigated for those members who prefer that method.
• Facebook NASIG Mentoring Group – Concept should be introduced and promoted at the Asheville Conference; Mentoring Group could be created prior to the conference to allow instruction for interested members not familiar with Facebook. (This was not done prior to the Asheville Conference, we hope to implement for the NASIG 2010 Conference.)
• One-on-one mentoring program could be implemented during mentor/mentee sign-up for Asheville conference.  A separately scheduled meeting of individuals interested in ongoing mentoring might be necessary at the Asheville conference. (This was not done prior to the Asheville Conference, we hope to implement for the NASIG 2010 Conference.)

Submitted by Dana Walker