of his alma mater. It was most likely due to this 1897 meeting that William Osler and Margaret Charlton became involved in the formation of the Association of Medical Librarians, founded on May 2, 1898, by four librarians and four physicians who met in the office of the Philadelphia Medical Journal, at the invitation of its editor, George M. Gould, M.D. The object of the Association was the fostering of medical libraries and the maintenance of an exchange of medical literature among its members. Membership was limited to librarians representing medical libraries of at least 500 volumes, with regular library hours and attendance. Miss Charlton served as the Association's first Secretary from 1898 to 1903 and again from 1909 to 1911, after it had become (in 1907) the Medical Library Association. One of the other founding members, Marcia Crocker Noyes (who was to become the first woman and first non-physician President of the Association in 1933), writes of Margaret Charlton as follows: "Miss Charlton was the one person who indirectly brought the Association into being from speaking with Dr. Osler. She had belonged to the American Library Association. Their problems were not our problems, and she felt lost and that time was wasted, yet she had striven for contact with those doing just the sort of work she was doing. And so she suggested to Dr. Osler that it would be a fine thing if the Medical Libraries could do the same thing the American Library Association was doing." (Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 23 (1934): page 33.) Later life In 1922 she left the Academy of Medicine, also under less than happy circumstances, and returned to Montreal to live with her sisters. She died there on May 1, 1931, and is buried, with her mother and two of her three sisters, in Mount Royal Cemetery. Awards in Her Honor Margaret Ridley Charlton Award for Outstanding Achievement At the winter 2004 meeting of the Canadian Health Libraries Association /Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada Board of Directors, it was decided to rename the Award for Outstanding Achievement in honour of Margaret Ridley Charlton. Legacy In November 2000, Charlton was proposed to the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada as a "person of national historic significance". This board, created in 1919, is responsible for making such recommendations to the Canadian government, and in late 2002 it supported