Margaret Ridley Charlton (December 10, 1858 – May 1, 1931) was a Canadian medical librarian, scholar, and author who was a founding member of the Medical Library Association. As Assistant Librarian of the McGill Medical Library from 1895 to 1914 and Librarian of the Academy of Medicine in Toronto from 1914 to 1922, she played a key role in modernizing medical libraries and establishing librarianship as an autonomous profession.

Early life

Margaret Ridley Charlton 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 middle name to Ridley, to honor her descent from the family of the martyred Bishop Nicholas Ridley, an Anglican martyr burned at the stake in Oxford in 1555. By the time Anglophone women were allowed to attend McGill University, Charlton was already twenty-six, so she did not pursue a university degree.

Career

As was becoming common during the late Victorian period in Canada, educated middle-class women were entering the labor force, particularly in professions such as teaching, nursing, and librarianship. During this time, a public library movement was also emerging; after a government grant in 1857 establishing lending libraries in Canada, the Free Libraries' Act was passed in 1882, further expanding opportunities for women to become librarians. Even still, out of the four librarians who were charter members of the Medical Library Association, only Charlton had any formal study in librarianship with the summer course she took at Amherst College. 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.

At the time Charlton was appointed Assistant Medical Librarian at McGill University's Medical Library in 1896 Upon starting at McGill in 1895, Charlton adopted the newly developed Dewey Decimal Classification system, however, she quickly discovered the Dewey system was not equipped to handle the complexity of medical literature and would later influence the development of specialized medical classification schemes.

In 1914, after leaving her position at McGill University Medical Library in Montreal, Charlton moved to Toronto and was appointed Librarian at the Academy of Medicine, where she continued to dedicate her life's work to the history of medicine until she retired in 1922., with Charlton writing to Marcia Noyes:

"My dear Miss Noyes: Yes, It was my idea of starting a Medical Library Association. I do not remember if I spoke to Sir William or Dr. Gould first. Yours, M. Charlton"

  • On 1 May 2006, the Government of Canada unveiled a commemorative plaque at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University to mark her national historic significance. It is displayed near plaques for William Osler and Maude Abbott.

Awards named in her honour

  • In 2004, the Canadian Health Libraries Association and the Association des bibliotheques de la sante du Canada renamed their Award for Outstanding Achievement as the Margaret Ridley Charlton Award for Outstanding Achievement. The award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to health sciences librarianship in Canada.

References

  • Margaret Ridley Charlton biography at Ex Libris Association