microforms for the same purposes that services like Lexis Nexis would eventually be created to perform cooperative cataloging, and reference. From the very beginning of his career, Shera seemed to be entirely comfortable with whatever type of controversy came to hand. 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.” We may be rudely awakened some morning with the realization that we are the hapless and unwilling guardians of the propaganda of a fascist ‘’regime’’.” In 1940, Shera accepted an appointment with the Library of Congress as chief of the census library project. 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. In 1944 the same year Shera obtained his Doctorate in library science, he was named the associate director of libraries for the University of Chicago. Throughout his time in this position Shera was the head of the preparations division, and then of readers’ services. He became a member of the University of Chicago Graduate Library School (GLS) faculty as an assistant professor in 1947. Four years later he was promoted to associate professor. In 1949 Shera’s first book Foundations for the Public Library; The Origins of the Public Library Movement in New England, 1629–1855, was published by the University of Chicago Press. This book is generally accepted as a classic discussion of the social factors contributing to the emergence of tax-supported public libraries. From 1950–1952, Shera was the chairman of the American Library Association’s committee on bibliography. 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. Under his leadership, the library school at Western Reserve became a leading contributor to the automation of libraries over the next three decades. 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