Born in Kennebunk, Maine in 1911, Elizabeth "Betty" Pritchett became a scholar and art historian. She graduated from Radcliffe College and New York University, receiving a Bachelor's degree in Art History and Classics before earning a Master's degree in Art History. Prior to working in the Doe Library, she was a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington D.C. and a research assistant to the renowned paleographer E. A. Lowe at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Pritchett traveled in Europe extensively, spending several years in Athens, first researching in its museums and later accompanying her husband of fifty-eight years, Professor W. Kendrick Pritchett, on his studies.
She contributed to the Library community from 1949 until her death. On Staff Appreciation Day in 1995, the campus honored Pritchett for over forty years of service. She was a member of various incarnations of the General Reference Service, including her work in the 1960s for the Humanities Bibliographical Division, which continued the special collection development of the Humanities Reference Service. Pritchett worked to build the Major Authors Collection in Graduate Services and, in her later years, with the Area Studies group. Staff may remember her as the person who weekly sorted the Library of Congress proof slips.
On March 13th, at 89, Elizabeth Dow Pritchett passed away. Honest, unpretentious, and gentle, she was able to see to the heart and speak as a friend.She was a person who would share what she was currently reading, a composer she had discovered, or an insight developed from the vantage point of her experience. Oftentimes more concerned about others than herself, she made the world a warmer place.
Excerpt from CUNews on Remembering Elizabeth "Betty" Pritchett