I agree that mentoring often takes place without involved parties noticing, nevertheless providing a great guidance for mentees. Looking back, I realize most of my ex-bosses were terrific mentors in generously sharing their knowledge and being open to questions and discussions. However, often this is not something that can be sought and formed by a mentee, and more depends on the initiative of a mentor. So having some mentoring programs to participate in when such an informal relationship is not easy to come by is great for new librarians in particular.

But as for me, I’ll withhold judgement until I use the thing.

The formal program I did was anonymous meaning that mentee/mentor were paired up and communicated through a system where neither knew the other’s identity. This had some serious benefits but in the end left me wondering who the person on the other end was.

I think it is helpful to have a mentor from within your library as well as from outside your library. An internal mentor can help with the politics. An outside mentor can see a much bigger picture and give you greater perspective. In the end I think this is where social networking comes in to play. Find someone you connect with and develop an informal mentoring or coaching relationship. I’m glad to see ALA establish these formal channels but I think people often overlook the value in the informal routes. Great post!

Andromeda, congratulations on making your 1st ALA attendance success! I am glad I caught you at LITA Happy Hour. I agree picking the programs and sessions that are just right could be tricky and we could most certainly use more detailed description about each meeting/program in advance. Hopefully this gets better in the future too. I hope to see you at the annual in D.C.

That said, it took a while for things to get off the ground — I didn’t start hitting my stride until the LITA happy hour, and Saturday was a bit slow, and then Sunday, whoa, Sunday.

Before the conference I definitely found it overwhelming to sort through all of the material (and more than a little surprising that librarians didn’t do a good job of organizing info about conference sessions, providing enough metadata for me to evaluate their relevance and applicability…). I deliberately underscheduled myself a bit in the hopes that I would acculturate enough during the weekend to learn where I really wanted to be, and in fact this happened, but…

…but that’s definitely, as you say, an aloof approach. It’s an approach that’s biased toward people who are willing/able to be very proactive and extroverted (and, while I am farther toward the extrovert end of things than many, I am still very much an introvert, hence missing out entirely on Saturday’s after-hours stuff). I do wish ALA were more welcoming — about extending invitations to join relevant groups, about explaining what those groups are, about expanding the acronyms (especially in conversations aimed at newbies — I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve seen sent over a Simmons GSLIS list that have some library acronym that is never once explained). I wish there were more useful conference planning tools (and I did give feedback on that).

I feel my ALA was a wild success as far as my goals went — developing a professional network, visibility. It was only a little bit successful, honestly, in terms of learning about issues in the library world, because it was easier to be involved in the socials (for all that some of them were not advertised, or I learned about them only an hour in advance!) than to be involved in the sessions (or even select correct ones). I also feel that library technology has suddenly gotten much more influential in my future career, just because these were the easiest people to meet and have fun with.

BTW I assumed that you were some kind of big organizer-y hotshot! It is inspiring to know that I could appear to be one myself after such a short time if I get involved in more things .

Personally I do feel much closer…if not to ALA, the still-opaque organization, then to librarianship and my future colleagues, and you were a notable part of that .

It’s great that you made efforts getting to know other members at conferences. I agree it is an important thing to do. I particularly loved meeting other new librarians at non-academic libraries, learning about different dimensions of librarianship.

I am not sure ALA would be much benefit for those who cannot travel to a conference. But hopefully it will change and more people can get involved without difficulty virtually with lower costs. As much as I enjoy attending a conference, not all librarians can do the same and there are many out there who still want to be professionally involved, participate, get support from, and contribute to a professional organization and I think ALA should find a way to make this happen. On the other hand, it is another problem that new members who took the risk of over-joining and attending conferences without knowing much about an organization don’t get guided at all in any helpful way (IMHO). I got no responses from divisions and sections I joined. I went up to their meetings at the conference. At least I heard at LITA town meeting that the issue of recruiting and retaining more members being discussed. So hopefully this gets more attention.

I thought it would be fairly easy to find my niche, but I actually feel scattered more than anything. I assume that will work itself out when I get a job and begin focusing on one (or possibly two) divisions. But I did have a fantastic Annual in Chicago and a really productive Midwinter in Boston (I, too, was feeling under the weather for the Tweetup and for a lot of the week. I think I was just exhausted. I’m so sorry we didn’t catch up).

I also understand about some of the happy hours and socials being uncomfortable. I am an “off the charts” introvert, but that doesn’t prevent me from putting myself out there and socializing with people. It just means it drains me instead of energizes me. But it is really tough to walk into a group of people who, seemingly, all know each other when you don’t know anyone (or very few)!

You’re exactly right though: you can make the experience more worthwhile by getting involved. I think the structure of ALA will begin making more sense to you (and me) the more we involve ourselves in it.

Congratulations on putting yourself out there, making the most of the conference, getting involved, organizing the Tweetup, and then continuing to blog about it! These are all great things, and it already puts you head and shoulders above lots of folks I will be eager to meet you in person one of these days soon.