Margaret Ridley Charlton

Margaret Charlton was a pioneering medical librarian who was instrumental in founding the Association of Medical Librarians - which became the Medical Library Association in 1907. She was the Associations's first Secretary.

She was born on December 10, 1858 in La Prairie, Quebec, a small town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River near Montreal. She was christened Margaret Anne but later changed her second name to Ridley, to honour her descent from the family of the martyred Bishop Nicholas Ridley - burnt at the stake in Oxford in 1555.

The McGill University Medical Library was founded on August 27, 1823. It was part of the university's Faculty of Medicine and, as was common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a faculty member held the title of "Librarian". Miss Charlton, who had recently completed a summer course at Amherst College in the newly developed field of librarianship, and is thought to have studied under Melvil Dewey, came to this library in 1895. She was appointed to be the library's first Assistant Librarian in 1896. She remained at the McGill Medical Library in this position until 1914, when she resigned under less than happy circumstances, and moved to Toronto as Librarian of the Academy of Medicine.

Miss Charlton was probably the first person with any formal library training to work at McGill University. Her interest in wider library issues was demonstrated shortly after she arrived, as she was reimbursed $55 for the expense of attending a meeting of the American Library Association in Chicago in 1896. The following year, the British and Canadian medical associations held a joint meeting in Montreal, and it was probably here that Miss Charlton first met Dr. William Osler. Osler had graduated from McGill in 1872, and after postgraduate studies in Europe he had returned as a faculty member. He left McGill in 1884 to go to the University of Pennsylvania and by 1897 was at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Osler was always interested in, and supportive of, libraries and had served on the Faculty's Library Committee while at McGill. He was almost certainly eager to meet the newly appointed Assistant Librarian of his alma mater.

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