Ann Shaffer joined the University of Oregon Libraries faculty in 2011.  She is the subject liaison librarian for music and dance, providing research assistance and classroom instruction related to research tools in those disciplines, managing the Knight Library’s music and dance collections, and overseeing all library purchases of music and dance materials.  She also performs specialized music cataloging, creating original catalog records for rare music materials and managing metadata for the online index to the UO Libraries' Historic Sheet Music Collection.  In addition to her role as librarian, Shaffer taught the core graduate course MUS 611, Research Methods in Music, from 2013 to 2018.

Shaffer is a member of the Music Library Association (MLA) and its Pacific Northwest chapter (PNWMLA), the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML), the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG), the Oregon Library Association (OLA), and the Viola da Gamba Society of America (VdGSA).  She served on EBSCO Publishing’s Music Advisory Board from 2012 to 2019.  She has presented at the annual conferences of MLA, PNWMLA, IAML, MOUG, and OLA, and has published in Notes, the peer-reviewed journal of the Music Library Association.

Shaffer earned her master’s degrees in musicology and library science from Indiana University, where she also completed coursework towards a PhD in musicology with a minor in ethnomusicology.  Her research interests include gender and exoticism, dance in film, and ecomusicology.  She has presented her musicological work at national conferences, including the International Association for the Study of Popular Music US chapter meeting and the Experience Music Project Pop Conference, and was a regular reviewer for the Archives of African American Music and Culture’s monthly blog Black Grooves from 2008 to 2010.  She earned her BA in music and medieval studies at Smith College, where she wrote an undergraduate thesis on editing and performance practice of the polyphonic pieces in the Codex Calixtinus.

As a performer, Shaffer plays viola da gamba and cello, and has served as a guest artist with the Salem Chamber Orchestra.  She has also studied a variety of ethnic dance forms, with a focus on West African dance, flamenco, and Middle Eastern & North African dance.