Meribah Mansfield is the Director/Fiscal Officer of Worthington Libraries.
She has worked in Central Ohio public libraries for over 35 years, including the Columbus Metropolitan Library, the Fairfield County District Library, the Upper Arlington Public Library and the Bexley Public Library. She received her M.L.S. degree from Western Michigan University and her B.A. degree in English from Wittenberg University.
She is a past president of the Ohio Library Association and past chair of the Ohio Library Council Board of Trustees. Meribah was a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission that formed the Ohio Public Library Information Network, and served on the OPLIN board from 1995-2001. She has twice been an instructor of the "Foundations of Librarianship" course for Kent State University School of Library and Information Science, and she is a member of the Public Library Association and the American Library Association. She served on the OHIONET Board of Directors and the State Library of Ohio's Resource Sharing Commission. She was elected to serve on the OCLC Members Council from June 2005 through May 2011.
Meribah has been involved in several building projects, including the renovation and addition to Columbus' Main Library in 1991, the Northwest Library in 1996 and the Old Worthington Library in 1998. Meribah and her staff developed Worthington Memory, a digitization project to celebrate Worthington's Bicentennial in 2003. The new Worthington Park Library opened in the Worthington Park Centre in April 2008. Renovations of the Old Worthington Library and the Northwest Library will be completed in 2008. Worthington Libraries Online is also being redesigned during 2008.
Under her direction, Worthington Libraries received the national Library of the Year award for 2007 from Gale/Library Journal. Worthington Libraries also received Special Mention as a finalist in the Library of the Year competition in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2006. Worthington Libraries received the first annual netConnect Library Web Site Award in the small public library category in 2002.
Meribah received the Librarian of the Year Award from the Ohio Library Council in 2003, the Friend of the Year Award from Kent State University School of Library and Information Science in 2003, a Key Communicator Award from the Worthington Schools in 2003, and the Leadership for a Lifetime Award from Leadership Worthington in 1999.
Meribah lives in Columbus with her husband Bruce. Her 19-year-old son Matthew entered Elon University in North Carolina in the fall of 2008. Her 30-year-old daughter, Jessica Mead, lives with her husband and two young sons in Toledo, Ohio. She is a children's librarian at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library.
rev. Oct. 2008