The 2019 Marcia C. Noyes Award, given by the Medical Library Association, has a special meaning this year, both professionally to our organization and personally to me, your blog author.
Not only is it the 100th Anniversary of the death of MLA founder, Sir William Osler, MD, but the winner of the award is MedChi friend, MJ Tooey, AVP Academic Affairs, and Executive Director of the Health Sciences & Human Services Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
MJ has been more than kind in assisting MedChi and the Center for a Healthy Maryland on more than one occasion.
The links between MedChi go back more than 200 years, when the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland founded the first medical school in Maryland. Marcia Noyes, MedChi's librarian for 50 years, was instrumental, along with Dr. Osler, in founding the Medical Library Association, about which I will be lecturing at McGill University next week.* The Noyes Award was established in 1947, just after Marcia's death, and is only awarded to exceptional librarians, not annually.
There are many accounts of the physicians at MedChi, or the Faculty, as it was known then, giving bouquets of flowers to Marcia. About five years ago, we decided to revive the tradition and give the winner of the Noyes Award a bouquet of flowers, with Marcia's approval!
The Noyes Award is being given to MJ Tooey this week, pulling together some of the strands of the history of several organizations where both Sir William Osler, MD, and his favorite librarian, Miss Marcia C. Noyes, were both intimately involved. (The actual awards ceremony is at the finale of the conference, but the winner gets the flowers at the opening breakfast so they can enjoy them throughout the conference week.)
Like Marcia, MJ is exemplary in her field and is such a deserving recipient of the Marcia C. Noyes Award. From all of us at MedChi, our warmest congratulations go to our friend, MJ Tooey.
*Look for my presentation about Marcia, Osler and the founding of the MLA on this blog in a few weeks.
Hello Meg, Congratulations to M.J. Tooey on receiving the Noyes award. Sounds like an all-around win situation.
ReplyDelete--Jim