Marshall, Mary Louise, 1893-1986

Mary Louise Marshall (1893 - 1986) was Librarian and Professor of Medical Bibliography at Tulane University School of Medicine, and the longest-running president of the Medical Library Association (1941–46).[1][2][3] Mary Louise Marshall was born on July 19, 1893 in Salem, Illinois.[4] The oldest of three children, she studied at the Illinois Women's College and Southern Illinois Normal University before completing her studies at the University of Wisconsin's Library School in 1914; In 1919, she left Illinois for New Orleans, LA where she became employed at the American Library Association's (ALA) War Library "scheme for soldiers not yet discharged from the armed forces."[1] When the New Orlean's ALA office closed, she took the position of librarian at the Rudolph Matas-Orleans Parish Medical Society Library, which later consolidated into Tulane University's Medical Library. She held a dual role as Professor of Medical Bibliography.[1][2] When the Army Medical Library, now the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) needed a chairperson to lead a committee of librarians, medical scientists, and physicians to produce a classification scheme, which would later evolve into the National Library of Medicine classification,[1][6] a library indexing system covering the fields of medicine and preclinical basic sciences.


Frank B. Rogers and the NLM Board of Regents
When the NLM formed their first Board of Regents, Marshall was invited by Dr. Frank B. Rogers, then Director of the NLM, to serve as the only woman and the only medical librarian