Jesse Hauk Shera
’Embrace the technology but do not become its servant’’ -Jesse Shera (1976)
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. Jesse Shera had a great influence on library education and was responsible for restructuring and revitalizing the American Document Institute now called American Society for Information Science.
Jesse Shera was an educator, a librarian, and an author. He was also a futurist, a philosopher and unmistaken humanist. Born December 8, 1903 in Oxford, Ohio he received an A.B. from Miami University in 1927 and then went on to graduate with a Masters in English from Yale College. Shera didn’t start out life wanting to be a librarian. Definitely not a Nancy Pearl who knew at the age of ten….. What he really wanted to do was to be an English teacher. He graduated from Yale in 1927 and no one was hiring professors. So he took a job as an assistant cataloger at Miami University and soon moved on to Scripts Foundation for Research in Population Problems where he worked with a Hollerith Machine, a computing machine used to compile and tabulate data. The year was 1928! After twelve years of organizing electronic information he returned to school, this time to the University of Chicago for a PhD. in library science. “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.” Shera took a position as Associate Director of Libraries for the University of Chicago after graduation and in 1947 joined the graduate school faculty.
In 1952 Shera became the dean of the library school of Western Reserve University and in 1955 established the first documentation center in a library school. He became especially interested in automation and computerization and their practical application for libraries. His participation in the emergence and early evolution of information science is the accomplishment that “has been widely interpreted as his greatest contribution to librarianship. It may have been his greatest folly, however because information has subsequently flooded the library profession with tensions and confusion by emphasizing the technical aspect of communication systems and ignoring the human aspects.” (Budd 2002)
He later became a critic of the movement when it overshadowed the “humanistic basis” He wrote I have tried to broaden the scholarly dimensions of librarianship and to show the contributions that science can make to the field without losing it‘s humanistic basis…and to destroy the universal prototype of the little old lady in a high necked dress and tennis shoes.”
Shera wrote and spoke about every type of librarianship from public to academic to special. He wrote numerous books including Foundations of the Public Library, Knowing Books and Men, Libraries and the Organization of Knowledge and many articles in professional journals He also served as the editor of a number of library and information science related journals. Shera suggested numerous procedures that rely on information technology including collective purchasing, interlibrary loan systems, using microforms (like Lexis Nexis), cooperative cataloging, bibliographic record and documentary control. JESSE, the primary email discussion list used by library and information science educators, is named in honor of Jesse Shera.
The American Library Association offers two awards in Shera’s name: the Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research, and the Jesse H. Shera Award for the Support of Dissertation Research.
In 1965 Jesse Shera was named to Lyndon Johnson’s Committee for the Employment of the Handicapped. He struggled with strabismus, (crossed eyes) his entire life, a treatable condition today, but a huge handicap (for most people) in the early part of the 20th century. I didn’t discover this fact until I had filled three pages of Shera’s accomplishments. Jesse Shera has earned his place in the Library Hall of Fame. This witty critic and popular observer of the library scene reminds us to balance the human side of our profession with the technical, to not be afraid to revise our opinions as time passes, to boldly confront controversy, and to never forget our human side. He is certainly a credit to the profession. Shera died on March 1, 1982 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He left behind a wife and two daughters.
Citations
American National Biography Shera, Jesse H. Oxford University Press, 1999 801-802
Berry, John N. “Check Change with Shera.” Library Journal (1976) 130, no.7 (April 2005)
Budd, John M. “Jesse Shera, Sociologist of Knowledge?” (2002) The Library Quarterly, 72(9) 423-440 retrieved 04/03/2010Stable URL: http://Budd, www.jstor.org/stable/40039791
Wright, Curtis, H. “Shera as a Bridge between Librarianship and Information Science”The Journal of Library History (1974-1987), Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring, 1985), pp. 137-156 Publisher(s): University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25541594
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Shera
’Embrace the technology but do not become its servant’’ -Jesse Shera (1976)
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. Jesse Shera had a great influence on library education and was responsible for restructuring and revitalizing the American Document Institute now called American Society for Information Science.
Jesse Shera was an educator, a librarian, and an author. He was also a futurist, a philosopher and unmistaken humanist. Born December 8, 1903 in Oxford, Ohio he received an A.B. from Miami University in 1927 and then went on to graduate with a Masters in English from Yale College. Shera didn’t start out life wanting to be a librarian. Definitely not a Nancy Pearl who knew at the age of ten….. What he really wanted to do was to be an English teacher. He graduated from Yale in 1927 and no one was hiring professors. So he took a job as an assistant cataloger at Miami University and soon moved on to Scripts Foundation for Research in Population Problems where he worked with a Hollerith Machine, a computing machine used to compile and tabulate data. The year was 1928! After twelve years of organizing electronic information he returned to school, this time to the University of Chicago for a PhD. in library science. “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.” Shera took a position as Associate Director of Libraries for the University of Chicago after graduation and in 1947 joined the graduate school faculty.
In 1952 Shera became the dean of the library school of Western Reserve University and in 1955 established the first documentation center in a library school. He became especially interested in automation and computerization and their practical application for libraries. His participation in the emergence and early evolution of information science is the accomplishment that “has been widely interpreted as his greatest contribution to librarianship. It may have been his greatest folly, however because information has subsequently flooded the library profession with tensions and confusion by emphasizing the technical aspect of communication systems and ignoring the human aspects.” (Budd 2002)
He later became a critic of the movement when it overshadowed the “humanistic basis” He wrote I have tried to broaden the scholarly dimensions of librarianship and to show the contributions that science can make to the field without losing it‘s humanistic basis…and to destroy the universal prototype of the little old lady in a high necked dress and tennis shoes.”
Shera wrote and spoke about every type of librarianship from public to academic to special. He wrote numerous books including Foundations of the Public Library, Knowing Books and Men, Libraries and the Organization of Knowledge and many articles in professional journals He also served as the editor of a number of library and information science related journals. Shera suggested numerous procedures that rely on information technology including collective purchasing, interlibrary loan systems, using microforms (like Lexis Nexis), cooperative cataloging, bibliographic record and documentary control. JESSE, the primary email discussion list used by library and information science educators, is named in honor of Jesse Shera.
The American Library Association offers two awards in Shera’s name: the Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research, and the Jesse H. Shera Award for the Support of Dissertation Research.
In 1965 Jesse Shera was named to Lyndon Johnson’s Committee for the Employment of the Handicapped. He struggled with strabismus, (crossed eyes) his entire life, a treatable condition today, but a huge handicap (for most people) in the early part of the 20th century. I didn’t discover this fact until I had filled three pages of Shera’s accomplishments. Jesse Shera has earned his place in the Library Hall of Fame. This witty critic and popular observer of the library scene reminds us to balance the human side of our profession with the technical, to not be afraid to revise our opinions as time passes, to boldly confront controversy, and to never forget our human side. He is certainly a credit to the profession. Shera died on March 1, 1982 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He left behind a wife and two daughters.
Citations
American National Biography Shera, Jesse H. Oxford University Press, 1999 801-802
Berry, John N. “Check Change with Shera.” Library Journal (1976) 130, no.7 (April 2005)
Budd, John M. “Jesse Shera, Sociologist of Knowledge?” (2002) The Library Quarterly, 72(9) 423-440 retrieved 04/03/2010Stable URL: http://Budd, www.jstor.org/stable/40039791
Wright, Curtis, H. “Shera as a Bridge between Librarianship and Information Science”The Journal of Library History (1974-1987), Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring, 1985), pp. 137-156 Publisher(s): University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25541594
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Shera