Mentoring is a valuable tool for professional development, fostering a culture of continuous learning and mutual support within the cataloging community. Often libraries do not have the resources to provide specialized training for the new cataloger, making a formal mentorship program outside one’s institution particularly useful. This presentation will examine key elements that ensure a successful mentorship pairing, how the authors integrated these components into practice, and how the authors customized their program to address the mentee’s greatest area of need: finding practical solutions to both common and challenging cataloging questions.

Presenter: Sharolyn Swenson is the Continuing Resources Cataloger at Brigham Young University Library. She has worked in the library for 16 years and as a cataloger for 5. Sharolyn joined the ALCTS (now Core) mentoring program shortly after becoming a cataloger. 

Presenter: Bonnie Parks is the Collections Technology Librarian at the University of Portland where she oversees cataloging and metadata activities for the Clark Library. She teaches cataloging and metadata management for the University of Arizona’s College of Information Science.

Both Sharolyn and Bonnie are members of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging.