About

Mlibrarianus is a screen name I’ve used for some time. Gave birth to it during the height of the Gladiator craze and was a nod to my place of employment. But I’m really Beth Tribe, Coordinator of Software Support and Training for Howard County Library. I may not be a librarian by some people’s definition but I have worked in many departments of the library for 25 years (from Circulation, to InterLibrary Loan, to Automation, to Information Technology). So what exactly have a I done?

To list a few:

• supervised pages (‘old school’ name for the kids who shelved the materials…heck I was one myself back in the day – Word!)
• learned and managed 4 different systems to request materials from other libraries
• wrote procedures for Circulation and Interlibrary Loan
• helped to keep our ILS database running and up to date
• taught many a class (from Windows to Groovix [our version of Linux], from Thunderbird to Webmail [for email], RSS feeds to my first class for our public on Web 2.0 this fall)
• reorganized our Staff Intranet using Joomla
• helped with creating/editing pages for our new web site
• presented at Computers in Libraries, Association of Community Services, Joint Spring Conference and later this year at Maryland Library Association all on Web 2.0

I consider myself a “Jacqueline of all trades, Mistress of some”. I enjoy the variety that my job affords me. Without it I wouldn’t have been able to be the webmistress for MAILL (site will be moving to Joomla – look for a new look and better navigation), be one of the Merlin Community Builders, or have met some rather fascinating library folk (just check out my Twitter following/followers) from around the country.

Technically I’m not a true techie either. No formal training in the tech world just picked up this or that along the way (but then a lot of tech folks are self taught). Hopefully, my take on things will be a little more plain English (vs. techno speak), a little different (not truly tech but not forgetting my customer service background either) and a little bit interesting.

Contact info:

Email – mlibrarianus AT gmail DOT com