Mary Louise Marshall
Library Director, 1929 - 1959

Ms. Rogers was succeeded by Mary Louise Marshall (Mrs. John Hutton) whose term of office lasted until 1959. Ms. Marshall had been the librarian of the Orleans Parish Medical Society Library for almost ten years before she was appointed Director of the Tulane Medical Library. She was in charge of both libraries for the next twenty years.

During this time she was extremely active in national and international medical librarianship. She was the second woman elected president of the Medical Library Association during World War II. She remained in office for six years because the association was not able to hold annual meetings during the war. She stressed the importance of education and continuing education for medical librarians and appointed the first continuing education committee in MLA.

She worked with the Army Medical Library (now the National Library of Medicine) as chairman of a committee that produced the first Army Medical Library classification scheme, the precursor of the current NLM classification scheme used by medical libraries everywhere. She was the only woman and the only medical librarian to serve on the first Board of Regents of the NLM. She wrote several books on Southern medical history and was also extremely active in the Colonial Dames until her death in 1986.

History of the Medical Library