mar09b.indd


the way I see it 
Carrye Syma and Cynthia Henry 

Sharing program 
The Big-Boy Boomeroo of mentoring 

There is a wonderful work by Dr. Seuss called The Butter Battle Book.1 In this 
book, the Yooks and Zooks are sworn en­
emies: the Yooks eat their bread with the 
butter side up, while the Zooks eat their 
bread butter side down. Throughout the 
book, both sides develop weaponry trying 
to outdo one another and, therefore, never 
stop fighting one another. At the end of the 
book, we are left wondering which side 
will drop its Big­Boy Boomeroo and blow 
the other side up. 

Of course we librarians are not devel­
oping weaponry (unless you count our 
mental swords), but we are, in a sense, 
in an ongoing battle. Some might call it 
a generational gap that is happening in 
the profession; others might consider it 
an educational gap. There are librarians 
who obtained their degrees in a traditional 
classroom setting, while there are other 
librarians who took their classes online. 
In addition to this dichotomy, there is a 
wide gap in the ages that are currently in 
the field of librarianship. 

Experienced librarians know that they 
have a lot to offer newer librarians, but it 
sometimes seems that the knowledge of 
newer librarians is sometimes overlooked 
or maybe disregarded since this population 
is just emerging from a master’s program. 
We all strive to keep abreast of current 
trends and topics in libraries, and we all 
have different interests, strengths, and 
weaknesses. At times, it seems as if expe­
rienced and newer librarians struggle to 
prove themselves to administration. Who 
is more valuable to the organization? 

The experienced librarian with a lifetime 
of publishing, giving traditional library 
instruction, and developing bibliographic 
resources, or the new librarian with knowl­
edge of DSpace, podcasts, and Web page 
design? Are they not both valuable in their 
own right? Must each side develop a Big­
Boy Boomeroo to determine who is more 
valuable? 

Mentoring as a two-way street 
As we all have the same goals to dis­
seminate information to the end user, let 
us not argue over how our education was 
obtained, and let us not further promote 
and divide our profession by focusing on 
the generational gap that is currently occur­
ring in the profession. Instead, let us focus 
on how we can learn from one another. 
We all realize that lifelong learning is the 
key to a successful career, and mentoring 
is a good way to share information in an 
informal way. 

Mentoring does not have to be a 
one­way street, with all the information 
and resources flowing in one direction. 
As we all have skills to offer, perhaps a 
nontraditional mentoring program could 
be installed. Most mentoring programs as­
sign a “new” librarian to an “experienced” 
librarian. This is an invaluable combina­
tion, and one that should not ever be 
overlooked. What of the knowledge that 

Carr ye Syma is assistant librarian, e -mail: carr ye. 
syma@ttu.edu, and Cynthia Henry is assistant librarian 
at Texas Tech University Libraries, e-mail: cynthia. 
henry@ttu.edu 
© 2009 Carrye Syma and Cynthia Henry 

178C&RL News March 2009

mailto:henry@ttu.edu
mailto:syma@ttu.edu


the experienced librarian can glean from 
the new librarian? What if rather than the 
traditional mentoring program, pairing new 
and experienced, we were to implement a 
program where each individual mentored. 
Perhaps a more experienced librarian could 
mentor for collection development, while 
a new librarian could mentor for podcasts 
and D­space or another technology. Would 
we call this a “sharing program” rather than 
a mentoring program? 

Could we learn from the Yooks and 
Zooks, lay down our weapons and see all 
that we have to gain from one another? 

Mentoring programs have been imple­
mented at some colleges and universities 
with varying degrees of success. A very 
good article on mentoring programs is 
“Beyond Mentoring: Toward the Rejuvena­
tion of Academic Libraries” by Gail Munde.2 

This article discusses various mentoring 
practices and their applications to aca­
demic libraries, identifying the following as 
seven types of mentoring pairings: student 
peer­pairings; pairings between employees 
who hold the same position, the mentor 
being the employee with longer tenure; 
voluntary and mandatory organizational 
“match­making” based on the participants 
mutual interests; cross­library pairings via 
e­mail; tenured faculty members mentoring 
their untenured colleagues; group­centered 
structures in which one mentor serves from 
two to six protégés; and mentor/protégé 
pairs that focus only on long­range career 
advising.3 

Munde advocates for a mentoring model 
that “comes from the fringe of the business 
literature,” and is a “program that would re­
tain the functional components associated 
with information mentor/protégé relation­
ships, but would combine them with the 
career experiences considered preparatory 
to an employee’s promotion.”4 One sug­
gestion that is made in this article, which 
is incredibly beneficial, was requesting 
a complete resume from current profes­
sionals. This would allow the mentoring 
program to shift to sharing by pairing 

individuals whose resumes highlight the 
differences in their strengths. This would 
be a good indicator of which individuals 
could learn from one another and could 
allow individuals to select a mentor based 
on skills that they would like to obtain. 

Elisa F. Topper wrote an article entitled 
“The library as intergenerational work­
place.”5 In this article, Topper highlights 
ten ways to bridge the generation gap. The 
five areas that seemed to stand out, as a 
fairly “new librarian” of less than fi ve years 
professional experience, were: 

• all generations have similar values, 
• develop and nurture relationships, 
• focus on the strengths, 
• manage the difference, and 
• everyone wants respect.6 

Identifying areas that all generations can 
relate to is a way to find commonality in 
colleagues. This allows a basic trust to be 
established in the relationship, which then 
sets up the opportunity for colleagues to 
learn from one another. This article is very 
supportive of all librarians, in that it really 
gave kudos to all generations and spoke 
to looking past generational gaps to work 
together for the good of our libraries and 
library patrons. 

Another article on mentoring, “A Formal 
Mentoring Program in a University Library: 
Components of a Successful Experiment,” 
by Loise Kuyper­Rushing, looks at tra­
ditional mentoring. Mentoring programs 
traditionally have been set up where an 
established or tenured librarian shares 
information, knowledge, and professional 
experience with the newly hired librarian. 
While this is a very informative article, 
and gives a great deal of insight into the 
traditional mentoring program, it also 
sheds light on some of the pitfalls to such 
a program. This particular article lists one 
component of the plan as “Tenure­track 
librarians will be required to participate; 
tenured librarians’ participation will be 
voluntary.”7 The article states that the rea­
soning behind this was that “requiring an 
unwilling person to mentor another was 

March 2009  179 C&RL News 



absurd.” However, the opposite of that is 
true as well; requiring an unwilling person 
to be mentored would be just as absurd. This 
is a rather harsh but all too true scenario. 
Because mentoring is a learning process for 
both mentor and mentees, each participant 
needs to approach the mentoring relation­
ship with an open mind.8 

In a case such as this, you could allow 
mentees to choose one another because what 
we are proposing is a system that would 
not be the traditional caste system of a new, 
inexperienced librarian shadowing the ex­
perienced, tenured librarian. Rather it would 
be two librarians of different interests and 
specializations coming together and sharing 
what they know. Perhaps there could be a 
series of workshops attended and presented 
by tenured and nontenured librarians alike. 
Each librarian could present on his or her 
strength, sharing that information with col­
leagues. Topics could range from obscure 
article retrieval using Lexis­Nexis or collec­
tion development to interacting one­on­one 
with faculty or students or perhaps even how 
to set up e­mail alerts. Mentoring should be 
a two way street: with no true teacher or 
student, but rather two individuals learning 
from one another. 

In order for libraries to continue successful 
transition into the 21st century, we must start 
approaching librarianship as equals rather than 
experienced versus inexperienced, new versus 
old. Developing a new approach to mentoring 
programs such as the “sharing program” as 
outlined above will allow librarians to focus 
on the strengths that each of us have to offer, 
and also allow us to work on our weakness in 
a system that is supportive. And if librarianship 
is able to embrace the generation gap that is 
happening in the field by setting up the “shar­
ing programs,” then not only do we benefi t at 
present, but we would continue to benefi t as 
a whole by setting the precedence that learn­
ing can take place with any pairing, as long 
as each brings a different set of strengths to 
the relationship. 

After all, our roles and titles may have 
changed over the years, but we are still, 

lifelong learners, retrieving and sharing in­
formation, with our patrons as well as with 
each other. Some of us eat our bread butter 
side up while others eat their bread butter 
side down, but we all have a great deal to 
offer the profession. 

Notes 
1. Dr. Seuss, The Butter Battle Book (New 

York: Random House, 1984). 
2. Gail Munde, “Beyond Mentoring: 

Toward the Rejuvenation of Academic Li­
braries.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 
26, no. 3 (2000). EBSCOHost, Texas Tech 
University Library, Lubbock, Texas, March 
17, 2008, search.ebscohost.com/login. 
aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url 
,uid&db=tfh&AN=3256306&loginpage 
=Login.asp&site=ehost­live. 

3. Ibid., 172–73. 
4. Ibid., 174. 
5. Elisa F. Topper, “The library as intergen­

erational workplace,” New Library World 108, 
no. 5/6 (2007). Google Scholar, Texas Tech 
University Library. Lubbock, Texas, 12 May 
12, 2008, www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight 
/ViewContentServlet?Filename=/published 
/emeraldfulltextarticle/pdf/0721080507.pdf. 

6. Ibid., 287. 
7. Lois Kuyper­Rushing, “A Formal 

Mentoring Program in a University Library: 
Components of a Successful Experiment,” 
Journal of Academic Librarianship 27, no. 6 
(2001). EBSCOHost, Texas Tech University 
Library, March 17, 2008, search.ebscohost. 
com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType= 
ip,cookie,url,uid&db=tfh&AN=5602703 
&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost­live. 

8. Jeffery S. Bullington and Susanna D. 
Boylston, “Strengthening the profession, 
assuring our future: ACRL’s New Member 
Mentoring Program pairs library leaders 
with new professionals,” College & Research 
Libraries News 62, no. 4 (2001). EBSCO­
Host, Texas Tech University Library, May 
12, 2008, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx 
?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid 
&db=lxh&AN=27763912&loginpage=Login 
.asp&site=ehost­live. 

180C&RL News March 2009

www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight