Jesse Shera

Jesse Hauk Shera (December 8, 1903 – March 8, 1982) was an American librarian and information scientist who pioneered the use of information technology in libraries and played a role in the expansion of its use in other areas throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

He was born in Oxford, Ohio on December 8, 1903, the only child of parents Charles, and Jessie Shera.

His hometown of Oxford was a farming community and the home of Miami University.

Shera went to William McGuffey High School, and graduated in 1921.

While attending high school he played the drums in the school band, was a member of the debate team, a cheerleader, and he was the senior class president.

He lived in Oxford until after he obtained his undergraduate degree from Miami University.

In 1925 Miami University awarded Shera with a B.A. in English with honors.

Shera later went on to earn a master's degree in English literature from Yale University in 1927 and a Doctorate from the University of Chicago Graduate Library School in 1944, advised by Louis Round Wilson with Pierce Butler on his committee.

Shera suffered from strabismus throughout his life.

In 1928, Shera returned to Miami University and took a temporary job in the library as an assistant cataloguer and later in the year took a job as a research associate and bibliographer with the Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems.

As early as 1935, he was suggesting that college libraries should develop collective purchasing and interlibrary loan systems.

In addition, he suggested using microforms for the same purposes that services like Lexis Nexis would eventually be created to perform cooperative cataloging, and reference.

From the very beginning of his career, Shera seemed to be entirely comfortable with whatever type of controversy came to hand.

On librarian "neutrality", Shera warned in a 1935 address to the College and University Section of the American Library Association

"' … Today we can ill afford to stand mutely behind our circulation desks, calmly handing out reserved books at the beck and call of an endless stream of students, blandly reaffirming our convictions of our own 'academic detachment.' We may be rudely awakened some morning with the realization that we are the hapless and unwilling guardians of the propaganda of a fascist regime."

He remained a part of this project through 1938.

Shera hoped to become a college English teacher but never succeeded due to the depression and a lack of available teaching positions in colleges and universities.

"In what he has called 'an act of desperation on my part which the library profession has lived to regret,' he decided to make librarianship his career."

In the thirties, Shera was trying to convince the ALA Bulletin to be a more serious journal, and for librarians to be more careful and precise in how they answered patron questions.

In short, he was concerned with their level of professionalism.

At that particular time, there was no "professional creed", and this upset him, also.

He studied and wrote on the history and philosophy of libraries often, and considered the work of libraries to be one of humanistic endeavor.

In 1940, Shera accepted an appointment with the Library of Congress as chief of the census library project.

The next year he transferred to the Office of Strategic Services, where he was deputy chief of the central information division of the research and analysis branch.

In 1944 the same year Shera obtained his Doctorate in library science, he was named the associate director of libraries for the University of Chicago.

Throughout his time in this position Shera was the head of the preparations division, and then of readers' services.

He became a member of the University of Chicago Graduate Library School (GLS) faculty as an assistant professor in 1947.

Four years later he was promoted to associate professor.

In 1949 Shera's first book Foundations for the Public Library; The Origins of the Public Library Movement in New England, 1629–1855, was published by the University of Chicago Press.

This book is generally accepted as a classic discussion of the social factors contributing to the emergence of tax-supported public libraries.

From 1950–1952, Shera was the chairman of the American Library Association's committee on bibliography.

In 1952 Shera became dean of the library school of Western Reserve University, expanding its faculty and adding a doctoral program within a few years.

Under his leadership, the library school at Western Reserve became a leading contributor to the automation of libraries over the next three decades.

Also in 1952, Shera took over as head of the American Documentation Institute (ADI) (which continues as the Association for Information Science & Technology).

Prior to 1952, the ADI had been focused on refining the use of microfilm for the preservation and organization of documents; Shera turned its attention to applications of information technology.

In 1955 Shera teamed with James W. Perry and Allen Kent to found the Center for Documentation and Communication Research (CDCR), which advised industry, government and higher education on information systems.

This center was the first of its kind to be associated with any library school, and became a resource for the research into new areas of education for library schools.

According to an excerpt from the Saturday Review (December 1, 1956) found in the Current Biography, Shera suggests that "through the use of many machines we are at the beginning of a new era: an age which may bring quite unheard of ways for the more effective communication of knowledge".

In the 1960s, Shera designed a proposal for his project of "Social Epistemology", building on the work of Douglas Waples of the Graduate Library School at Chicago.

Waples dealt with social effects of reading, and asked the basic questions of the new discipline that Shera named social epistemology.