Terry Cook (archivist)


Terry Cook was a noted Canadian archivist and scholar in archival studies.

Biography

Dr. Terry Cook was born in Vancouver in 1947. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 1969, his Master of Arts from Carleton University in 1970, and his Ph.D. in Canadian History from Queen's University in 1977. He worked for the National Archives of Canada, specializing in archival appraisal, for a number of years. He was also an Associate Professor for the Archival Studies Program in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba from 1998-2012.
During his time at the National Archives, he established himself as a respected voice in archival theory, particularly for the development of macroappraisal. He worked as an archival consultant at Clio Consulting from 1996 to 2014. In 1998, he became a professor in the Archival Studies Program at the University of Manitoba. Cook was named a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists and a Fellow of the Association of Canadian Archivists in 2009. His first job was at the Public Archives of Canada, where he directed the appraisal and records for all media and developed an archival technique called macroappraisal. He authored over 80 articles, and edited many scholarly journals including Archivaria, American Archivist, and Archival Science.
His wife is Sharon Anne Cook, a historian and professor of education at the University of Ottawa. Together they had two children, Graham and Tim. Cook died on May 12, 2014 of pancreatic cancer in Ottawa, Canada.

Contributions to Archival Theory and Notable Achievements

Terry Cook was instrumental in the development of archival theory at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. His scholarship covered archival appraisal, theories of the archive, total archives, postmodernism, community archives, the fonds and series systems of arrangement and description, the contrast between analogue and digital thinking and relations between archivists and historians. Cook revealed the agency of the archivist and pushed archivists to deeply consider their role in the shaping of the historical record. He also urged archivists to be transparent in their interventions
Cook's most noted contribution to archival appraisal theory was the development of macroappraisal, which he developed during his time at the Library and Archives Canada from 1975-1998 and received international acceptance. It is a method for deciding which small percentage of archived materials should be kept while destroying the rest.
In 2002, he earned the Society of American Archivists' Fellows' Ernst Posner award. In 2009, he was named a Fellow of the Association of Canadian Archivists, and of the Royal Society of Canada in 2010.

Publications