Margaret Elizabeth Egan (March 14, 1905 – January 26, 1959) was an American librarian and communication scholar who is best known for “Foundations of a Theory in Bibliography,” published in Library Quarterly in 1952 and co-authored with Jesse Hauk Shera.
This article marked the first appearance of the term "social epistemology" in connection with library science.
She left Chicago in 1955 and joined Jesse Shera at the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she first served as a research associate at the newly formed Center for Documentation and Communication Research.
Furner (2004) lists the following contributions made in “Foundations of a Theory of Bibliography”: Although Egan was the first author on “Foundations of a Theory of Bibliography,” her untimely death (and Shera’s prolific publishing that followed) have led to frequent omissions of her name when citing the work.
In 1978, Shera wrote that "both the term and the concept [of social epistemology] were hers, but because I have given it wide currency, despite frequent disclaimers, it has generally been attributed to me.”[2]