Mentoring for Capacity Building of Librarians in Private Universities in South West Nigeria

This paper examined mentoring of librarians for capacity building in private universities in Nigeria. The survey research method was used with questionnaire formulated in line with the research questions put forward. The total enumeration method was used to select librarians and library officers in selected private universities in South-West Nigeria. Data was analyzed using frequency count and statistical mean. Findings revealed that the most prevalent strategy for mentoring practiced in libraries in private universities was senior professionals sharing their wealth of knowledge with younger ones (97.2%). This was aided by the fact that younger inexperienced librarians sought advice from more experienced ones. Forms of mentoring also revealed that individual mentoring was the prevalent form with 55.7%. All of the respondents were agreed that mentoring for capacity building had a lot of benefits such as building leadership skills, enhance lifelong learning and professional skill acquisition. The challenges of effective mentoring for capacity building included broken confidence from both mentee and mentor and unconstructive criticism from mentor. Majority of the respondents agreed that having clearly stated objectives and expectations of the mentoring process and mutual respect for each other were some of the solutions to the challenges to effective mentoring. Recommendations were then made in line with the findings of the study such as the librarianship profession having defined orientation programme for mentoring and that library management should include both formal and informal mentoring strategies should be included in the organisational cultur