Jesse Shera

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Jesse Hauk Shera (1903 - 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, and lived there through his undergraduate college years, later going on to earn a Masters Degree in English literature from Yale University in 1927 and a Doctorate in library science from the University of Chicago in 1944, having studied under Pierce Butler.

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.

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 cotroversy 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’’.”^[1]

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) (now the American Society for Information Science). Prior to 1952, that organization 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 Alan Kent to found the Center for Documentation and Communication Research (CDCR), which advised industry, government and higher education on information systems.

He wrote and spoke about every type of librarianship from public to special and the history thereof. Of special interest to him was the affect that modern culture has had in the shaping of the modern library and the effect that libraries have had on their host societies in turn.

Shera wrote numerous books and articles and served as the editor of a number of library and information science related journals, including Library Quarterly, American Documentation, and the Journal of Cataloging and Classification. He also served as editor of the Western Reserve University Press.

Despite his work in advancing information science and the use of information technology in library contexts, throughout his career he was a consistent believer in the importance of sociological and humanistic aspects to librarianship and information organization. Late in his career he came to believe that the "human side" of librarianship and information work in general faced a danger of being overshadowed by attention to technical matters as the information explosion of the 1980s began to take shape.^[2]

Over the course of his life, Shera touched every aspect of Library science. He championed technology but urged careful use of it, rather than subservience to it. At times, his articles almost seem to push entirely in one direction or the other, but taken as a whole he was fairly evenhanded. Proponents on both sides of the technology debate claimed him as their own, but he didn't seem to have any affinity for either extreme camp until at least the mid-seventies. This theme is repeated over and over across several years: ‘’Embrace the technology but do not become it’s servant’’.

Many of his books are actually compilations of essays or presentations, but there are a fair number of text books scattered through his life’s work.

JESSE, the primary email discussion list used by library and information science educators, is named in honor of Jesse Shera.

[edit] Books by Jesse Shera (a partial list)

Introduction to library science: basic units of library service. Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1976
Knowing books and men; knowing computers too. Littleton, Colo., Libraries Unlimited, 1973
The foundations of education for librarianship. New York, Becker and Hayes 1972
"The compleat librarian"; and other essays. Cleveland, Press of Western Reserve University, 1971, 1979
Sociological foundations of librarianship. New York, Asia Pub. House 1970
Documentation and the organization of knowledge. Hamden, Conn., Archon Books, 1966
Libraries and the organization of knowledge. London, C. Lockwood 1965
An epistemological foundation for library science. Cleveland, Press of Western Reserve University, 1965
Information resources: a challenge to American science and industry. Cleveland, Press of Western Reserve Univ. 1958
The classified catalog: basic principles and practices. Chicago, American Library Association, 1956
Documentation in action / Jesse H. Shera, Allen Kent, James W. Perry [editors]. New York : Reinhold Publishing Corp., 1956.
Historians, books and libraries: a survey of historical scholarship in relation to library resources, organization and services. Cleveland, Press of Western Reserve University, 1953
Bibliographic organization. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951
Foundations of the public library: the origins of the public library movement in New England, 1629-1855. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1952, 1949
An eddy in the western flow of America culture. Ohio state archæological and historical quarterly. --Columbus, O., 1935.
The age factor in employment, a classified bibliography, by J.H. Shera ... Bulletin of bibliography and dramatic index. --Boston : Boston Book Co., 1931-32.

[edit] Further reading

H. Curtis Wright. Jesse Shera, librarianship and information science. Provo, Utah : School of Library and Information Sciences,

Brigham Young University (1988)

John V. Richardson Jr., The Spirit of Inquiry: The Graduate Library School at Chicago, 1921-1951. Foreword by Jesse Shera. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982.

John V. Richardson Jr., The Gospel of Scholarship: Pierce Butler and A Critique of American Librarianship. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992. xv, 350 pp.