Influence of informal mentoring on formal mentoring for the professional development of librarians

The paper, which is non-empirical, takes a look at the influence of informal mentoring on the formal one in the professional development of librarians. It explained the concepts of mentoring, informal mentoring, formal mentoring, and professional development. It also exhaustively x-rayed the content of informal mentoring (which included the economic and the social aspects) and formal mentoring (which included the professional development needs).It concluded by postulating the pyramid of hierarchical mentoring needs to explain the relationship between informal and formal mentoring. The pyramid graphically explains how the economic and social mentoring needs could be satisfied before the professional development needs of librarians. It recommended that much research work needs to be conducted on the state and development of informal mentoring before the publication of Homer’s poem, “the Odyssy”, all tertiary institutions need to place mentoring on the front burner, and finally, much research work needs to be conducted on the benefits of mentoring for library and information science (LIS) students.