"A brilliant mind": Margaret Egan and social epistemology

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by Jonathan Furner

The importance of Egan's influence even among this exalted group is confirmed in a second interview with Shera conducted on June 1, 1970, by Ruth Helmuth, the university archivist at Case Western and former employee of the CDCR (Shera, 1970b). Shera says to Helmuth: "a lot of my thinking even today is colored by Margaret's thinking. Brilliant gal really, almost a genius in some ways. And I owe her a tremendous debt, because ... her influence on my thinking is probably greater than any other. Certainly it's greater than any other about library problems; sure, there's no question about that." At the time he made these comments, Shera was sixty-seven and Egan had been dead for eleven years. We can readily assume that Shera knew personally most if not all of the finest minds that had emerged in library and information science in the midcentury period. His singling out of Egan from this pantheon remains a striking tribute.

Shera went on to write the entry on Egan that appeared in the Dictionary of American Library Biography of 1978. Here he states: "Even today, on those rare occasions of contemplating what I have published, I am amazed to find how much of it is her speaking through my own halting prose" (Shera, 1978, p. 159). He also quotes from a letter he received from Ralph R. Shaw at the time of Egan's death: "Hers was one of the truly great minds of American librarianship" (Shera, 1978, p. 159). Winifred Ver Nooy, writing to Shera at the same time, concurs: "She was such a grand person, with such a brilliant mind" (unpublished letter from W. Ver Nooy to J. H. Shera, February 1, 1959. Papers of Jesse Hauk Shera [1903-1982], series 27DD5, box 1. CWRU Archives, Cleveland, OH).

Shera's personal papers are also kept by the university archives at Case Western. Sifting through multiple series of boxes in Cleveland, one may see firsthand how Shera built his reputation as a correspondent of remarkable wit, honesty, and energy. Yet one may also be confounded by how few references to Egan appear in these papers. When Shera does make reference to Egan--for instance, in the oral interviews of 1968 and 1970--he invariably introduces her as "my old friend and former associate" (Shera, 1968b, 1970b). But among thousands of letters sent to and received from Shera's associates, covering all periods of his professional life, not a single one is addressed to or signed by Egan. One might expect to have encountered at least a few dating from the period 1952-55, when Egan was in Chicago and Shera in Cleveland; but if, indeed, any ever existed, they were not deposited in the archives. I have not been able, as yet, to find out where, if anywhere, Egan's own papers have been kept.

5.2.2 Content Analysis A qualitative approach of a second kind is potentially the most productive approach of all, and it is that which involves close reading and content analysis of the texts of Egan's works. A review of Egan's first-authored publications, twenty-one in total with five full-length journal articles (Egan, 1937; Egan & Shera, 1949; Egan, 1951a; Egan & Shera, 1952; Egan, 1956b) and seven substantial conference papers (Egan, Butler, et al., 1947; Egan, 1951b; Egan, 1953b; Egan, 1953c; Egan, Focke, et al., 1956; Egan & Henkle, 1956; Egan, 1956a), reveals Egan as a central player in the popularization amongst North American library scientists of the motives, concerns, and research results of the European documentation movement. The late 1940s and early 1950s, of course, were the time of the publication of Bradford's collection of papers (Bradford, 1948) simply called Documentation, which Egan reviewed favorably (Egan, 1950) and together with Shera wrote an introduction that was reprinted in later editions (Shera & Egan, 1953); the revitalization of the American Documentation Institute, later to be renamed the American Society for Information Science (ASIS); and the launch of the journal American Documentation.