Dorothy Whitson Freed (10 February 1919 – 1 April 2000) was a New Zealand author, composer, and music historian. She made significant contributions to the field of music librarians, and authored several books and articles regarding musical information and resources in New Zealand. Early life and family Freed was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her father was James Gerald Stokely Doorly, a mariner and Antarctic explorer, musician, and author, and her mother was Forrestina Muriel Whitson. She was the younger of two daughters. Early in her childhood, her family moved from New Zealand to Williamstown, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. She completed her public education in Melbourne, before returning to New Zealand in 1936, when she was 17. In New Zealand, she found work in a secretarial and media role. She married her husband William Ian Freed in 1940, and together they had three children. Education While Freed was raising her three children, she enrolled at Victoria University College to study composition. She studied under Douglas Lilburn, and graduated with a Bachelor of Music in composition in 1958, at the age of 39. In 1959, she qualified and began her career as a librarian in Wellington. She also underwent additional compositional training from 1964 to 1966, when she travelled to London and studied with composers Peter Racine Fricker and Elisabeth Rutyens. Career From the start of her tenure as a librarian in 1959 to her retirement in 1986, Freed worked tirelessly as a music librarian, as well as an advocate for other New Zealand composers. As part of her work, she helped to found SOUNZ, the Centre For New Zealand Music, which is an online library that contains a large selection of scores, CDs, books, and resources. This library also contains biographical information about composers, helping to create a comprehensive database for the preservation of New Zealand music. In addition, she founded the New Zealand division of the International Association of Music Librarians in 1982, and then served as its president. The association holds annual board conferences, launches collaborative projects between library branches, and publishes journals, which all help to strengthen the library community in New Zealand. Awards and recognition In 1958, Freed won the New Zealand Broadcasting Service/Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) Award for a New Zealand song. She also won the Phillip Neill Memorial Prize in composition, an award seeking to acknowledge the compositional accomplishments of students in