In 1947, after a brief stint with the Central Information Division of the Office of Strategic Services, Shera joined the faculty of the GLS. By 1951, he was appointed dean of the School of Library Science (SLS) at Western Reserve University (WRU) in Ohio. Shera expanded and improved the SLS program, and forged a link between the school and the fields of documentation and special librarianship.

He was a charter member of the American Documentation Institute, and in 1953 became editor of the Institute's journal American Documentation, a position he held for seven years. In 1955 Shera established, with the help of James Perry and Allen Kent, the Center for Documentation and Communication Research (CDCR). The CDCR became a pioneer in the emerging field of information retrieval. As a result of Shera, Perry and Kent's work, the school not only received research grants, but was also the recipient of "the first operational system for the mechanized retrieval of information," the GE 225 general-purpose computer. These and other achievements, notably his prolific writing, brought Shera international recognition.

Despite his successes in the field of documentation, Shera eventually began to rethink his belief that information science could provide the "intellectual and theoretical foundations of librarianship." He believed librarians had to look beyond the "mechanized access to data banks or networks" to find the underpinnings of library theory.