About Me

My name is Taylor Kaplan, and I am a recent MLIS graduate. I live in Portland, OR where I moved in in October 2021 after spending a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up in Eugene, so the return to Oregon feels like coming home.

I devote much of my free time to volunteering at community radio stations as a DJ and music library facilitator. In fact, working in radio stations and record stores contributed to my initial interest in librarianship, and my eventual pursuit of the MLIS.

Upon speaking with some fellow radio station volunteers who worked in libraries, I noticed parallels between librarianship, and the work I was already doing. Record store inventories and radio station libraries are indeed organized via classification systems, however loose knit. They are curated and controlled by way of collection management policies. They require advocacy and outreach campaigns, as the Internet diminishes their cultural influence in the information age. And, they naturally involve constant interactions with people, which often resemble the music equivalent of reference interviews, research consultations, and readers' advisory services.

After being laid off from my record store job at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I determined that librarianship presented my clearest opportunity to apply my interests and passions to a sustainable career path. Enthusiastically, I applied to San José State University’s School of Information in Summer 2020, and was accepted into its ALA-accredited Master of Library and Information Science program, beginning Spring 2021.

While I began the MLIS with the intention of pursuing either music librarianship or archival work, a course in Information Literacy & Learning piqued my interest in research support and instruction. My past experience in radio production helped me to quickly build my competence in instructional video creation, and I was drawn to the process of compiling LibGuides as well. Over Summer 2022, an internship in the Research & Instruction department at Portland State University Library allowed me the opportunity to produce tutorial videos for their YouTube page, and solidified my interest in instructional librarianship. 

I completed the MLIS in December 2022. Now, I look forward to building my library experience, and further establishing my professional network in and around the Portland area.

When I'm not honing my skills as a librarian, I can be found DJing on the radio or at local events, building my record collection, cooking, doing karaoke and pub trivia, perusing new cookbooks and atlases, and spending quality time with my fiancée and our spoiled cat, Marty.