Walking Paper

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In the past eight years Aaron Schmidt has been a circulation clerk, reference librarian, and library director. Shortly after completing his MLIS at Dominican University, Schmidt saw the potential of applying new media technology to libraries and launched successful programs at his suburban Chicago public library. Helping the library connect to its community through things such as instant messaging, weblogs and social software led to Aaron publishing articles in Library Journal, School Library Journal, Library High Tech News, Online, and others. He has presented on the topic of library technology and usability throughout the United States, and in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands and Spain. In 2005, Schmidt was named a Library Journal "Mover & Shaker."

Schmidt moved to Portland, Oregon in 2006 and became the director of a nearby public library. He helped the library grow and gain full membership in the Washington County Cooperative. During this time he continued to write, give presentations and workshops and work for other libraries as a consultant.

Currently he is the Digital Initiatives Librarian for the District of Columbia Public Library but still lives in Portland. He helps plan forward thinking, fun projects for the library, helping them connect to the community and teach them about the Read/Write Web. He also assists with website visioning, conducts usability testing, leads the library's Library 2.0 Interest Group and helps coordinate and generate ideas for the library's digital research and development project called DC Library Labs. He was part of the team that created the first iPhone and Blackberry online catalog searching applications.

He maintains a library and website usability weblog, walkingpaper.org and can be reached at librarian [at] gmail [dot] com

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