Papers of two former Medical Library Association presidents cataloged in Philadelphia

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has completed a grant to catalog the papers of two of the college's librarians, Walton Brooks McDaniel II, Ph.D. (1897–1975), and Elliott How Morse (1916–1992). Both served as presidents of the Medical Library Association (MLA).

McDaniel, familiarly known as “McD,” served as college librarian from 1933 to 1953, then as curator of historical collections from 1953 to 1973. He was editor of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association (1936), a member of the MLA Executive Committee (1936–1937), and, later, president of MLA (1946). In 1953, McDaniel traveled to London to deliver the keynote address at the first International Congress on Medical Librarianship. Closer to home, McDaniel was influential in the establishment of the Philadelphia Union Catalogue and was active in the Metropolitan Library Council of Philadelphia, of which he was elected president in 1943. In 1946, McDaniel was appointed honorary consultant to the U.S. Armed Forces Medical Library.

McDaniel produced more than ninety articles on the history of medicine, medical historiography, and the history of the College of Physicians, as well as works concerning libraries and librarianship. He wrote and published Fugitive Leaves (1935–1938, 1956–1967), a publication dedicated to notes and articles about the college's collection. McDaniel also edited Transactions and Studies (1937–1955), the college's journal that in McDaniel's time covered both current medicine and medical history. He also served as secretary of the American Association for the History of Medicine (1944–1946).

In 1953, the College of Physicians created the position of curator of the historical collections, a position to which McDaniel was appointed in that same year. Relinquishing the position of librarian to his assistant, Morse, McDaniel continued his service to the college until his retirement in October 1973.

Morse was college librarian for twenty-eight years (1953–1981), during which time he developed the contemporary library at the college and pioneered regional cooperation. At the College of Physicians, he worked to raise money from area medical schools and commercial and nonprofit organizations interested in using the library's resources and from various levels of government through grant applications to support the library's services. From 1956 onward, he oversaw the Medical Documentation Service, which evaluated, indexed, and abstracted journal articles for clients.

In the mid-Atlantic region, he was one of the founding members of the Philadelphia Regional Group of MLA in 1951, served as the group's first vice-chairman, and assisted in drafting the group's bylaws. He served as its second chairman. He began service on the Board of Directors of the Union Library Catalog of Pennsylvania in 1971 and served as its president in 1973/74. He also led the formalization of the existing mechanisms of cooperation among the area's medical libraries and marshaled their support for an application by the College of Physicians to become one of the National Library of Medicine's regional medical libraries. The application was successful, resulting in the formation of the Mid-Eastern Regional Medical Library Service (MERMLS) in 1968. MERMLS continued in operation for fourteen years. The associated regional reference service lost its federal support in 1977 but was replaced by the College Library Information Service (CLIS), which was supported financially by hospital libraries. Finally, on the national level, he served on the Board of Directors of the MLA and was that association's president in 1969/70. Just before Morse's retirement in 1981, the library of the college joined OCLC with the intent of making the college's holdings more widely accessible.

Funding for the project was provided by a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The finding aids are available on the College of Physicians' Website (http://www.collphyphil.org).