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186 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

by Yuan Tung-li and John K. Fairbank, which offered a model of cultural and library activities for
the United States. Following the memo and guidance of DCR, ALA develops its China Projects.
However, under the shadow of war and the ever-changing Sino-American relation, the China
Projects only succeeded in limited fields such as book exchange and donation.

Jesse H. Shera’s thoughts and practice concerning documentation education
〇a*
ZHOU Ya〇
It was an era for American Library Science education to transform to Library and Information
Science education in 1950s and 1960s. As the dean of School of Library Science, Western Reserve
University, Jesse H. Shera actively advocated documentation education from 1952 to 1970. The
study aims at systematically reviewing and summarizing Shera’s thoughts and practice concerning
documentation education during this period with the purpose to uncover the general situation of
American Library and Information Science education in transition. The main research method
adopted is the analysis of historical material, including works of Shera, the primary archives
collected by Case Western Reserve University and other materials.
In summary, Shera’s thoughts and practice concerning documentation education mainly included
three aspects. Firstly, Shera actively constructed the disciplinary theory for documentation. There
is a close relationship between social epistemology and documentation. Shera’s documentation
education was profoundly affected by the social epistemology. Shera had been working on the
theoretical construction of documentation since 1950s, involving documentation’s definition,
scope and the relationship with librarianship especially special librarianship, which enriched
documentation’s disciplinary theory system. Secondly, Shera founded Center for Documentation
and Communication Research which was the first documentation research center in American
library schools. According to Jesse Shera’s design, the Center had three functions, namely scientific
research, academic communication and serving the instructional program of the School of Library
Science. Under the successive leadership of James W. Perry and Shera, the Center had conducted
a series of research projects on information storage and searching, etc., and accordingly achieved
some research results like the pilot system of Education Resources Information Center. Besides,
the Center had organized a series of academic conferences on documentation which promoted
the communication and dialogue among library educators, librarians, businessmen, scientists and
technicians. Thirdly, Shera introduced documentation courses to library education programs and
stressed the training for special librarians focusing on documentation. Shera’s educational ideology
on training for special librarians took the documentation education as the core. Documentation
education had played an important role in the Master of Science in Library Science program,

* Correspondence should be addressed to ZHOU Ya, Email: tushuguanzhouya@126.com, ORCID: 0000-0003-1632-0685