Mentorship Program

• Bringing people together to build individual capacity

Structure of the relationship between mentor and mentee can and should be defined at the outset by the parties involved. However, here are a few simple guidelines you may or may not want to follow for success:

• Set up a clear overall goal and timeframe. "Learn Ruby" is ok, but is not specific enough. "Create and deploy experimental Vote2Promote discussion board in Ruby on Rails" would be better.
• Set up expectations. For example:
  • Set aside time each week to collaborate on articulating weekly goals.
  • Establish a communication forum and expected response time in advance.
  • Establish "office hours" in chat room or IM for questions and review of progress
• Evaluation: We would love to know what worked or didn't work for advice to future mentors

Mentors

Bess Sadler - I currently have a couple of pro bono projects that would be good learning opportunities for someone interested in learning more about Blacklight, Ruby on Rails, Solr, museums, or libraries in Africa. I am also happy to be a mentor generally, and I'm open to suggestions about what form that might take.

Mentee

Bess Sadler - I have been a developer for Digital Humanities and Library software projects for over a decade, but I am relatively new to library management and administration and I would love to find a mentor with more experience than I have in those areas.