Shaw's personal project was to mechanize the bibliography and citation process of the Agricultural Library, creating more efficient means of searching and referencing information.

Ralph Shaw founded a publishing company called the Scarecrow Press in 1950 in the basement of his Alexandria, Virginia home, “assisted only by his wife Viola”.

“Shaw knew that costs would have to be kept in control because he envisioned publishing scholarly books that were intellectually important, yet economically marginal.

"[6] Kenneth F. Kister, in his biography of Eric Moon describes Shaw as “dynamic…a polymath who had more irons in the fire than any librarian since Melvil Dewey”.

[5] And Moon himself, considered a “radical” in the library world, had once warned a researcher that “interviewing Ralph Shaw in the morning was like having “six martinis for breakfast”.

[5] Eventually, Moon replaced Shaw as chief editor of Scarecrow press as he faced his battle with cancer and treatment and they had conflicts in the interim.

It “was purchased in 1995 by University Press of America and moved from its Metuchen, New Jersey, headquarters to Lanham, Maryland, where it is now a member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group".

As a dedicated bibliographer, Shaw noted that bibliography traditionally focused upon the physical aspects of an item or on its method of production.