Margaret Ridley Charlton
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IntroductionSee also Canadian Health Librarians - Leaders, Past and Present and Famous librarians in history Margaret Ridley Charlton (1858 - 1931) was an early pioneer in medical librarianship in Canada. Charlton was born on 10 December 1858 in La Prairie Quebec, a small town on the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, and christened Margaret Anne. She later changed her middle name to Ridley to honour her descent from Bishop Nicholas Ridley, who was burned at the stake in Oxford in 1555. It is thought the difficulties she experienced during her career stem from her outspokenness on issues she cared about. In 1897, Charlton helped to found the Association of Medical Librarians (see the archives) which became the Medical Library Association (MLA) in 1907. (Some decades later, in 1976, a group of Canadian librarians from the MLA came together to form CHLA/ABSC (Canada).) Charlton’s first position as a librarian was in the Montreal YMCA library. However, it was at the McGill University Medical Library (now the McGill Life Sciences Library) then a department of the university's Faculty of Medicine where Charlton assumed the mantle of "Assistant Librarian" after attending Amherst College in 1895 (where she likely studied under Melvil Dewey). In 1896, Charlton was appointed the library's first Assistant Librarian, a position she occupied until 1914 when, after problems arose, she resigned and moved to Toronto to be Librarian of the Academy of Medicine. Charlton was probably the first person with formal library training to work at McGill University. Her interest in library issues began early in her career and she was reimbursed $55 to attend a Chicago meeting of the American Library Association in 1896. The British and Canadian medical associations held a joint meeting in Montreal in 1897, and it was probably there that Charlton met William Osler, who had graduated from McGill in 1872. Osler showed an interest in and support of libraries and had served on the Faculty's Library Committee while at McGill. It was likely that Osler was eager to meet Charlton, the new Assistant Librarian of his alma mater. Involvement in MLAAt a meeting in 1897, William Osler and Charlton got involved in the Association of Medical Librarians which was formally founded on May 2, 1898. Four librarians and four physicians met in the Philadelphia Medical Journal offices at the invitation of its editor George M. Gould. The goal was to foster medical libraries and exchange medical literature among library members. Membership was limited to those librarians working in medical libraries with at least 500 volumes, with regular hours and attendance. Charlton served as the Association's first secretary from 1898-1903, again from 1909-1911, after a name change to the Medical Library Association in 1907. Another founding member, Marcia C. Noyes, was the first woman and non-physician President of the MLA in 1933 who wrote:
Death and posthumous honoursIn 1922, Margaret Charlton left the Academy of Medicine under less than happy circumstances and returned to Montréal. She died in Montreal on May 1st, 1931 and is buried, with her mother and two of her three sisters, in Mount Royal Cemetery. In 2000, Charlton was recommended to the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada as a "person of national historic significance". In 2003, she was added to the list of approximately 600 other "persons of national historic significance." In 2006 a plaque honouring her accomplishments was unveiled outside the McGill Life Sciences Library (formerly the McGill Medical Library). Winners of the Margaret Charlton AwardSee also
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