Allison King's Portfolio
Annotated Bibliography

Level, A. V., & Mach, M. (2005). Peer mentoring: one institution's approach to mentoring academic librarians. Library Management, 26(6/7), 301-310. Retrieved November 16, 2007, from Emerald database. doi:10.1108/01435120410609725

Level and Mach discuss different types of mentoring that tenure-track academic librarians receive and how those different types work at the Colorado State University Libraries (CSUL). There are two types of mentoring: formal mentoring and peer mentoring. Formal mentoring is when a tenured faculty member takes a tenure-track faculty member as a mentee. The mentor helps the mentee learn about the libraries practices and makes sure they are on-track to obtain tenure. However, with the large number of retirees in academic libraries lately, the mentor to mentee ratio has gone up dramatically. Therefore, some libraries are including peer mentoring for tenure-track librarians. Peer mentoring involves groups of librarians of approximately the same status getting together help teach the new librarians the ropes and to help encourage and support each other through the tenure process. At CSUL, the formal mentoring program was not working for many of the new tenure-track librarians, so some of them got together and, with the approval of the library's management, established a peer mentoring group, "juniors." The juniors had regular meetings during which they discussed the tenure process, invited senior faculty to give talks, and had formal presentations and panel discussions. The peer mentoring group has not only assisted tenure-track faculty in feeling better about the tenure process, but also helped to create cross-department discussions and collaborations, which is seen as a huge advantage for the library.  Peer mentorship can be and incredibly effective way of integrating a new faculty into the library and proving benefits both to the workers and the organization as a whole.


Liu, J.-S., Tseng, M.-H., & Huang, T.-K. (2004). Mediating team work for digital heritage archiving. Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 259-268. Retrieved September 12, 2007, from The AMC Digital Library database. doi:10.1109/JCDL.2004.1336135

Liu, Tseng, & Huang recognized that while there are many initiatives to preserve cultural heritage in a digital format, they are done by professionals in the digital archiving world and since these professionals cannot be in all places at once, there are pieces of cultural heritage that are being lost. Therefore, they propose a system which allows a team of amateurs to create a digital collection of material that they are passionate about. The system works by breaking down the process into a series of tasks and responsibilities, based on the strengths of the different members of the team, so that each person knows what their roles are and what is expected of them. The team uses software called HAM (Heritage Archiving Mediator), which allows them to input their work, track the progress of the endeavor, and discuss problems that may come up. According to the authors, two digital archives have been created using the process they have outlined and HAM to keep it all in order. The authors understand that to create a digital heritage archive, many different types of specialists are needed and they all need to work together and to be enthusiastic about the subject they are working on. They have put a great deal of thought into their proposal, both in terms of what is necessary to create a digital archive through online teamwork and how to keep it organized. It would be great to see further testing of their system and software to find out how well it works in different situations with a variety of materials and subjects.


Mi, J., & Nesta, F. (2006). Marketing library services to the Net Generation. Library Management, 27(6/7), 411-422. Retrieved November 9, 2007, from Emerald database. doi:10.1108/01435120610702404

Mi and Nesta propose a way of dealing with the supposed decline in the use of libraries due to the internet, and in particular search engines such as Google. In order to help users make use of the libraries, the authors suggest that libraries should use known techniques to market libraries to the Net Generation. The Net Generation are people who have grown up with a computer for almost their whole life and use the internet as "their primary media vehicle." In order to market to them, Mi and Nesta stated that libraries should figure out what needs these users have and how to show them the added value of the library. Ways they recommend to do this include updating the library brand to beyond just books and make websites that incorporate interactive media and non-linear learning. I agree with the authors in that the future of libraries depends on how well the value of the library is marketed to the Net Generation and think that they came up with a number of good ideas for how to go about doing this marketing.


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