Congratulations Terry Cook

Terry Cook (third from left) with (left to right)
David Duncan (former Secretary of the University of
Dundee) and fellow keynote speakers Elizabeth
Shepherd (UCL) and Verne Harris (Nelson Mandela
Foundation) at the Philosophy of the Archive
conference, April 2008

Many of you will have seen the email Tom Nesmith of the University of Manitoba sent to the archives and records email listservs this week congratulating his colleague Terry Cook on his election as a member of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). Tom explains in his email that this is the highest distinction that can be awarded to a scholar in Canada and that

only a handful of archivists have been members of the...Royal
Society of Canada, and they were elected for their outstanding scholarship as historians. Terry is the first to be recognized for scholarship about archives, and for his prominent role in defining and shaping the contours of the very field of Archival Studies as a distinct intellectual and academic pursuit.

Tom also provided the formal RSC citation:

COOK, Terry, History of archives and of recorded information, University of Manitoba

Terry Cook has transformed archives from being perceived as storehouses of old records to sites of power worthy of scholarly attention. In rethinking appraisal to decide what records become archives, responding to the challenges of digital records and critical theory and exploring archival history, Cook has developed, nationally and internationally, a distinctive voice for Canadian archival scholarship.

Terry gave a keynote presentation at the 'Philosophy of the Archive' conference held by CAIS in Edinburgh in 2008 and part of the Royal Society of Edinburgh supported 'Investigating the Archive Project'. He returns to Scotland later this year to provide another keynote lecture at the conference 'Memory, Identity and the Archival Paradigm: an interdisciplinary approach' to be held in Dundee 8-10 December. This conference is part of the successor project to 'Investigating the Archive', the Royal Society of Edinburgh funded research network 'Memory and Identity: an Interdisciplinary Research Network in Scotland'.

We would like to add our congratulations to those already offered by Terry's friends and colleagues. This is a tremendous achievement and one thoroughly justified by the quality and depth of his scholarship and his outstanding contribution to the theoretical basis of the recordkeeping profession.