Edith Ditmas
Edith Margaret Robertson Ditmas (1896, Weston-super-Mare – 28 February 1986) was a British archivist, historian and writer. She is thought to have had an MA degree from the University of Oxford and was unmarried.[1]
Information services
Ditmas was an influential official of the British Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, whose journal she edited, and of its successor, ASLIB. As ASLIB general secretary in 1946, she called strongly at the Empire Scientific Conference for "a combination of government encouragement and private initiative" in developing specialized information services. This approach was to prevail.[2]
Local history
Ditmas turned in retirement to writing guidebooks. Latterly she was resident for a long period at Benson, Oxfordshire, and completed a thorough history of it in 1918. This circulated in typescript and was published posthumously in 2009, with addenda of information on subsequent archaeological research and of early maps.[3] The one surviving picture of Ditmas was taken on a Women's Institute outing, the WI being one of her abiding interests.[4]
Selected writings
- 1923: Ditmas, Edith Margaret Robertson: Ezra and Nehemiah. SPCK, London.
- 1942: Ditmas, Edith: "Special library in time of war". In: Proceedings of the 17th Aslib Conference. London 1942, pp. 52–55.
- 1956: Ditmas, Edith: Gareth of Orkney. Faber, London. Novel.
- 1970: Ditmas, Edith Margaret Robertson: Tristan and Iseult in Cornwall. Forrester Roberts, Brockworth.
- 1973: Ditmas, E. M. R.: A Short History of Benson Church, Oxfordshire. British Publishing, Gloucester.
- 1979: Ditmas, E. M. R.: Traditions and Legends of Glastonbury. Toucan Press, St Peter Port.
- 1973: Ditmas, E. M. R.: The Legend of Drake's Drum. Toucan Press, St Peter Port.
- 1981: Ditmas, E. M. R.: Glastonbury Tor: Fact and Legend. Toucan Press, St Peter Port.
- 2009: Ditmas, Edith: The Ditmas History of Benson. Pie Powder Press, Wallingford.
References
- ↑ Oxford Mail, 9 November 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2014.; Vera Chapman states in an introductory note to her 1975 historical novel The King's Damosel that she was at Oxford with Edith Ditmas. Retrieved 14 September 2014.
- ↑ W. Boyd Rayward (ed.): European Modernism and the Information Society (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), p. 208 Retrieved 1 January 2015.
- ↑ Archives Wales. Retrieved 14 September 2014.
- ↑ Pie Powder Press site. Retrieved 1 January 2015.
- Bibliography
- Laurie J. Bonnici, Jonathan Furner, Alexander Justice, Kathryn La Barre, Shawne D. Miksa, Helen Plant: Pioneering women in information science. 40, Nr. 1, 2003, pp. 425–426. doi:10.1002/meet.1450400151
- Kimber, Richard: Miss Edith Ditmas: an appreciation. 42, Nr. 4, 1986, pp. 217–224. doi:10.1108/eb026794
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