Frank Cook departs from UW-Archives

by Jonathan O'Connell

Cook and his wife, Mary Ann, at his retirement party. Cook and Robin Rider. Debi Doyle, CTS, and Thomas L.W. Johnson, associate registrar for UW-Madison Memorial Library staff members Dennis and Vicki Hill. Heather Boyer, Cathy Jacob and Lisa Johnson, staff members in the UW-Archives. Former Secretary of the Faculty Steve Myrah.

Since the 1960s, Frank Cook has led inquiring minds through the tidy labyrinth of cardboard boxes that hold files detailing the history of the University of Wisconsin.

Cook retired on Sept. 28, leaving him to remember exactly what he enjoyed so thoroughly about his work.

"I’ll miss being able to help researchers solve their concerns and problems," Cook said. "And I'll miss putting information together in such a way that people can access it and find answers to their questions."

Cook has helped answer questions for thousands of people, often more than once. "Just the other day a woman whom I had helped very briefly about a year ago came back looking to do research on another topic," he said.

Some inquiries are academic, some are not. Cook recalls the "lonely faces" of alumni looking for information on people with whom they had lost contact. "They come in trying to find someone they knew from a long time ago," he said. "Someone they think they can remember."

While much of the archives staff has been together for more than 20 years, the archives themselves have been in a constant state of growth since their inception in 1951, and more changes are on the way. In addition to the steady accumulation of paper, electronically registered listings and online catalogs are changing the way records are preserved and organized.

"So much information is being recorded electronically, and that is something I don’t know a thing about," Cook said. "When I got here, we didn’t even have an electric typewriter. Not to say that things were better back then, but it is changing very quickly."

Amazingly, Cook has never filled out a job application. He grew up in the western part of Virginia and began graduate work at the UW-Madison in 1961. The next year he started working part-time on the library staff. After receiving his Ph.D. in American history, Cook figured that he would end up a professor somewhere. Instead in 1965, he opted to stay in Madison and began working full time in Memorial Library.

In his retirement, Cook plans on traveling, volunteering and working with the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries. He figures there will probably be a call or two placed to his house by archives staff trying to put their finger on something.

As always, Cook is ready to help.

"There are lots of things I know that aren’t necessarily written down," he said. "It’s not that I have a great memory, because I forget certain things all the time. It’s just a matter of being around the material."