"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.

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

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."

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.

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

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.

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".

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.

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.

Shera wrote numerous books and articles and served as the editor of a number of library and information science related journals.

"He tried to build information retrieval systems yet at the same time was a sober and sharp critic of the faddists, commercial hucksters, and techie boosters who would and often did take us down expensive and obscure roads on our way to the future.

[10] This technology is a great opportunity, but it is important to keep Shera's advice in mind to not allow it to define the profession.