SHERA, JESSE HAUK (8 Dec. 1903-8 Mar. 1982), internationally respected librarian and library educator and dean of the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University (subsequently CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY), was born in Oxford, Ohio, the son of Charles H. and Jessie (Hauk) Shera. He received an A.B. from Miami University (Ohio) in 1925, an A.M. from Yale in 1927, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Library Science in 1944. He became dean of the Library School at WRU in 1952, having worked for the Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems (1928-40), the Library of Congress (1940-41), the Office of Strategic Services (1941-44), and as associate director of the library and associate professor of library science at the University of Chicago. As dean of WRU Library School, Shera helped found the Ctr. for Documentation & Communication Research which did pioneering research in automated information storage and retrieval and machine literature searching, and of which Shera became director in 1959.
Shera was president of the Ohio Library Assoc. and on advisory commissions to the Census Bureau, Education Office, and Natl. Science Foundation. He represented the U.S. government in Europe and Latin America at international conferences on documentation and librarianship, served on the President Lyndon Johnson's Commission on Employment of the Handicapped and the Cleveland Mayor's Commission on Employment of the Handicapped. Shera was dean of the Library School until 1970; in 1972 he was appointed dean and professor emeritus. Shera married Helen M. Bickham and had 2 children, Mary (Baum) and Edgar B.