Kenneth Decker Shearer was a consummate librarian, a brilliant mind and gentle spirit who touched the lives of many. A teacher, a scholar, a family man, and a friend-he excelled in all roles. Ken's long-standing love and area of expertise was the American public library. He edited Public Libraries from 1978 to 1988; wrote approximately fifty articles and scholarly papers and edited; or co-edited several books, addressing research on the geography of information, text development in emerging nations, libraries and the political process, and, most recently, readers' advisory service. He also played an active role on the board of The World Library Partnership, whose mission is to establish libraries in Africa and other developing regions.
Readers' advisors who did not have the pleasure of studying with Ken, may well know him through articles such as "Readers' Advisory Services: A Response to the Call for More Research" (which he co-authored with Pauletta Bracy in RQ, Summer 1994) and "Readers' Advisory Services: New Attention to a Core Business of the Public Library" (North Carolina Libraries, Fall 1998) as well as his books: Guiding the Reader to the Next Book (Neal Schuman 1996) and The Readers' Advisor's Companion (co-edited with Robert Burgin, Libraries Unlimited 2002).
Born and raised in Lawrence, Long Island, NY, Ken was a librarian from the start. As a child, he acquired a small library - complete with book stacks - which he kept in his parents' basement. He recalls being read to by his aunts and even proposed to his Aunt Helen so that she could read to him every day.
Ken earned his undergraduate degree at Amherst College, and his MLS and PhD degrees in Library Science at Rutgers University. After working at Peninsula Public Library in New York and Detroit Public Library in Michigan, he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught from 1968 to 1974. He then joined the faculty of North Carolina Central University as Professor of Library and Information Sciences and taught there until his retirement in 2002.
Ken's intellect and his interests were wide-ranging, as one can confirm by reading some of his writings on readers' advisory, which refer to titles as diverse as Lassie Come Home, In Cold Blood, Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain, and The Piano Shop on the Left Bank. However, even his close friends did not know that he was an honors graduate from Amherst College in mathematics, and that he had studied mathematics as a graduate student at Columbia University before deciding (as he once told me) that he just didn't believe Cantor's concept of transfinite numbers. Some years ago, the local newspaper ran an article on the "hidden gems" on the faculties of the universities in this area; the one faculty member selected to represent North Carolina Central University was Ken Shearer. The article pointed out that Ken had been instrumental in the creation of the field of geolinguistics. Ken's intellectual appetite knew few boundaries.
More than anyone I have ever met, Ken enjoyed reading; lunch with Ken always included book recommendations. Of course, he had other interests as well. . He once told me that his favorite sport was American politics; and he enjoyed Scrabble, at which he was an excellent player. (I know because I lost to him several times.)
In fact, the last time we met, we were scheduled to play Scrabble, but Ken was in too much pain to sit through a game, so instead we just talked - about books, films, libraries, politics, and his own situation. A readers' advisor to the end, one of the last things that Ken did was lend me a book.
Kenneth Decker Shearer died on Saturday, October 15, 2005, at his Chapel Hill home, surrounded by his loving family, which included his wife Ann and his three sons. He was sixty-eight and had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2003.
Ken's final contribution to the profession of librarianship is his middle son, Timothy, who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while working as part of the library automation team at UNC's Davis Library. Ken often described Timothy as his most successful recruitment effort for the profession.
In my last email to Ken, I told him that he had been the greatest intellectual influence in my life. I suspect that he was a great intellectual influence to many more people, including several of the leaders of the readers' advisory movement. We will all miss him far more than we can imagine.
Think where man's glory
Most begins and ends,
And say my glory was
I had such friends.- William Butler Yeats, "The Municipal Gallery Revisited"
Ken's family has asked that contributions in memory of Ken be made to the North Carolina Central University Foundation and earmarked for the Lightner-Lewis Endowment Fund, which was established by his friend, colleague, and former dean, Dr. Annette Phinazee. Checks should be made payable to the NCCU Foundation and should include a note in the memo line that the gift is for the Lightner-Lewis Endowment. Checks may be mailed to:
North Carolina Central University
Office of Institutional Development
PO Box 19363
32 William Jones Bldg
Durham, NC, 27707.
Robert Burgin
is Professor at North Carolina Central University's School of Library and Information Sciences and President of the North Carolina Library Association. He is editor of The Real Story: A Guide to Nonfiction Reading Interests (Libraries Unlimited, forthcoming) and Nonfiction Readers' Advisory (Libraries Unlimited, 2004); and he is co-editor with Kenneth Shearer of The Readers' Advisor's Companion (Libraries Unlimited 2002).