Retention of BIPOC Librarians and How Mentoring Can Help: A How-to-Guide

The recruitment and retention of BIPOC librarians is essential to keeping librarianship an inclusive and diverse profession, but the percentage of BIPOC librarians hasn't seen a significant rise in the past ten years. There are many factors that cause retention rates to be low, but mentorship has been identified as one of the missing pieces that could help increase retention rates. While mentoring isn't the sole solution to low retention rates, it is an important piece of the puzzle that can help make BIPOC librarians feel welcomed in their workplaces. This session will present the work from an annotated bibliography detailing the recent history of BIPOC recruitment and retention to highlight the importance of prioritizing these matters, then will provide an overview of a mentoring guide, offering some mentoring tips and methods that may benefit the BIPOC at your institution.