Pauline Cook was born in 1913. She received her B.A. in 1934 and her B.S. in 1935 from the University of Minnesota. Ms. Cook worked in the University of Iowa Libraries for 15 years. She was hired as an assistant in the Reference Department in 1937 and was promoted to librarian of the Foreign Language Library in 1940, the same year she received her master's degree in English. Pauline Cook married during the 1940s and thereafter wrote under the name Pauline Cook Hall. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics in June 1949. She was promoted in 1951 to head of the Reference Department. Pauline Cook Hall left Iowa City for Philadelphia in 1952 and died November 22, 1965, in Philadelphia. She was buried in Albia, Iowa.