Description

Dorothy Prescott's career has been as a Map Curator working in libraries. She has an Honours degree in Geography and qualifications in Librarianship. She has worked in Nigeria where she first became a Map Curator and established a collection for the University of Ibadan Library. Later after migrating to Australia she established a map collection for the University of Melbourne Library. Her last appointment was as Map Curator of the National Library Collection in Canberra from 1979 to 1983. In 1984 she established a business consulting to libraries and other organizations holding map collections. She became an Approved Valuer of cartographic material for the Commonwealth Government's Taxation Incentives Scheme in 1987.

In 1980 she became a member of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Committee for Cartographic Materials which has published two editions of Cartographic materials: a manual of interpretation for AACR2. In 1980 she also became an Associate Member of the Australian Institute of Cartographers and then a Member of the same Institute which later became the Mapping Sciences Institute of Australia. She represented Australia on the International Cartographic Associations's Commission F History of Cartography from 1982 until she retired in 2003. The last piece of work carried out for the Commission was a Bibliography on the History of Australia's National Topographic Mapping Agencies (2003).

She has published many articles on maps and map librarianship and has taught the subject to both cartography and librarianship students. In 1996 she published with Dr Thomas Perry Guide to maps of Australia in books published 1780 to 1830: an annotated cartobibliography.

She has been involved with both the cartography and surveying professions serving on boards and committees since the middle seventies. Her commitment to surveying has been recognized by a number of awards among which is 'Eminent Spatial Scientist of the year 2003' and in June 2003 she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for services rendered to Map Librarianship and Cartobibliography.

Since retiring her chief interest has been map history and cartobibliography work on John Arrowsmith's mapping of Australia being her principal interest.

Published resources

Conference Papers

• Prescott, Dorothy F., 'Australian plates in John Arrowsmith's London Atlas of Universal Geography', in International Cartographic Conference, A Coruna, Spain, 11-16 July 2005, http://icaci.org/files/documents/ICC_proceedings/ICC2005/htm/pdf/oral/TEMA25/Session%201/DOROTHY%20PRESCOTT.pdf. Details

Journal Articles

• Gerritsen, Rupert, 'Arrowsmith's Australian Maps', Map Matters, no. 19, November 2012. http://www.australiaonthemap.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/MapMatters19-Spring20122.pdf. Details
• Prescott, Dorothy F., 'Australia as depicted by John Arrowsmith in his London Atlas', Journal of the International Map Collectors Society, no. 133, Summer 2013, pp. 17-22. Details
• Prescott, Dorothy F., 'The John Arrowsmith Australian Maps Project', University of Melbourne Collections, no. 12, June 2013, pp. 34-44. Details

See also

• Trove, National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-478468. Details