Editing Medical Library Association (section)

== History ==
[[File:Medical Library Association Historical Marker 1420 Chestnut St Philadelphia PA (DSC 3248).jpg|thumb|Medical Library Association Historical Marker, 1420 Chestnut St. Philadelphia PA]]
Founded on May 2, 1898, the Association of Medical Librarians, as it was known until 1907, was founded "to encourage the improvement and increase of public medical libraries."<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2047412&blobtype=pdf |format=PDF|title=George Gould: Medical Libraries1|date=4 May 1898|pages=15–19|pmc=2047412|access-date=2015-09-27|pmid=18340740|volume=1|issue=4|journal=Med Lib|last1=Gould|first1=G. M.}}</ref>  Its charter members included four librarians: [[Marcia Croker Noyes|Marcia C. Noyes]], [[Margaret Ridley Charlton|Margaret R. Charlton]], [[Elizabeth Thies-Meyer]], and Charles Perry Fisher, and four physicians: [[George M. Gould]], John L. Rothrock, E. H. Brigham, and William Browning.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Doe |first=J. |date=1949 |title=The Development of Education For Medical Librarianship |journal=Bulletin of the Medical Library Association |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=213–220 |issn=0025-7338 |pmid=16016868|pmc=194818 }}</ref> MLA is the second oldest special library association in the United States.

The MLA Exchange was one of the founders' earliest and most important projects, helping build medical libraries in the United States and many other countries by exchanging duplicate publications. The organization has subsequently developed a variety of programs to serve the needs of health information specialists.

The [[United States National Library of Medicine|National Library of Medicine]] holds a collection of the organization's archival material that ranges from 1898 to 2002.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://oculus.nlm.nih.gov/mla|title=Medical Library Association Archives 1898-2002|publisher=National Library of Medicine}}</ref>