Library professional guidance: Transferring competences or educating new generation of librarians?

Professional guidance is a straight and effective way for job adaptation and education of a new employee. Many libraries apply this simple technique in many forms. To explore the status of professional situation in the libraries, its assessment and problem recognition, the study was completed in 2025. Two hundre Russian librarians were surveyed. The survey findings demonstrate that 100% respondents consider professional guidance to be essential for the new employee orientation. The respondents’ ideas of professional guidance, its advantages, functions, institutional organization, expected qualities of potential mentors, are revealed. The experience of respondents, both mentors and apprentices, is analyzed; their assessment of effectiveness of this professional and interpersonal interaction, is offered. The opinions on professional guidance axiologial significance, its role in values transfer and education of new librarians are obtained. The scientific novelty of the study is that it represents professional guidance as an element of the library’s corporate culture, based on the empirical data reflecting the views of the librarians of various professional experience. The findings will make the foundation for large-scale analysis, and enable to specify the further study road map. In practical dimension, they may enhance management decisions on library professional guidance.

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