Death Reference Desk

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DeathRef
31 Aug 10, 01:27:39 +0000



Categories

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We Like

  • Daily Undertaker
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  • Obit Magazine
  • Pushin Daisies
  • Taphophilia (dot) Com
  • Wikipedia Death Portal

Tags

animals anthropology Arlington Cemetery assisted dying attending your own funeral auctions audio Bali bio-cremation bioethics books brain death capital punishment cardiac death celebrity death China civil rights coffins columbaria corpse abuse crafts cremains cryogenics cryonics cults death and smell death masks death meditation death with dignity decomposition definition of death digital archiving digital assets Dignitas disease Edward and Joan Downes euthanasia Facebook films foreclosure forensics Foxconn free speech funeral directors funeral homes funerals games genealogy ghost bikes grave markers green burial Haiti Earthquake home burial homicide immortality infographics informatics insurance investment Japan jewelry last words lecture lifecasting living with the dead marketing mass graves medicine memorializing memorial tattoos Mexico mock funerals moment of death mummies mysterious deaths obesity obituaries online memorials patents pets photos planned giving plastination podcast premature burial promession protests public art relationships religion research reusing graves roadside memorials seminars soldiers spiritualism statistics stress superstition taxes thanatos tours twitter unclaimed bodies urns vertical burial video wayward bodies webcasting wills writing

About

Welcome to the Death Reference Desk! Geographically dispersed but unified with dark inside, we are two librarians and one professor of death and dying practices. Here we combine our expertise to inform the casually interested and morbidly curious alike about All Things Death: the bizarre, the batty and the beautiful, from interesting blogs and recommended books to commentary and analysis of death in the news.

What We Do
What We Don’t
Who We Are


What We Do

We scour the web and beyond for death: Good death. Bad death. Interesting, bizarre, nuanced death. Culturally and politically charged death. Scientific death and the ideas over time that have gripped the human heart and mind regarding what it is and what happens thereafter. See the categories and tags at the right for insight into our interests and scope.

Death Ref includes:

  • current events with links to and commentary on death topics and trends
  • shoutouts for death-related lectures, art shows, conferences, etc.
  • research guides of scholarly and general interest books, journals, articles, websites and more
  • original essays when we’re feeling ambitious

We are also a bona fide reference desk. Have a death-related question? Simply complete the online form. The librarians will try to answer within a couple days, but please give us up to a week. Answering questions is a collaborative effort, and select, superb Q&A’s will be posted on the site. We include your first name or alias only (so make something up if you want), and we’ll never reveal your email address. We also won’t post something that’s clearly a private matter.

Please note we are not doctors or lawyers and cannot give medical or legal advice. We also reserve the right to refuse to post or answer any question for any reason whatsoever, so don’t be surprised if you’re rude and we ignore you.

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What We Don’t

We don’t take your money. As such, and as we tend to suffer full-time jobs and part-time lives, we cannot tackle your in-depth death research, nor will we track down obituaries or death dates for Gramma and Gramps. Your local library is the best place for that.

We also don’t aim to shock-and-ugh with content nor muck in excessive gore and brutality. Gross. That said, we are dealing with death, and we may have different ideas about what’s gruesome and gratuitous. While we aim for respectful, scholarly treatments of death and dying topics, please be advised that some of the content here or linked from here may offend you (full disclaimer).

With our focus on death in the news, we seldom include stories of random, natural deaths or sensationalistic splashy double-murder cannibal suicides. Dying happens all the time, and we’re less interested in individual instances of death than what it means — socially, culturally, politically, economically, and so forth.

Lastly, we don’t apologize for our dry and often morbid senses of humor. Sorry.

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Who We Are

John Troyer

Dr. John E. Troyer, Ph.D.
Read John’s posts | john@deathreferencedesk.org

John is Deputy Director of and a Death and Dying Practices Associate at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, England. He received his Ph.D. from the Program in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society at the University of Minnesota in 2006. His first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in 2011. His father is a funeral director, but this explains less than you’d think.

Meg Holle

Meg Holle, MLIS
Read Meg’s posts | megholle@deathreferencedesk.org

Meg created and maintains the site for the Death Reference Desk, develops its content and helps answer your questions. Someday, she will die. In the meantime, you can read her creative writing at her personal website, deepsicks.com, or check out her info studies portfolio at megholle.com. She currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a longboard, plants and a murder of crows.

Kim Anderson

Kim Anderson, MLS
Read Kim’s posts | kim@deathreferencedesk.org

Kim is currently a reference and outreach librarian living (but not yet dying) in Portland, Oregon. Kim has always been fascinated by the mysteries of death and, being a curious sort, is interested in exploring a wide range of death-related topics. Contributing to this project is a way to gain understanding and share information with others. In her free time, Kim enjoys prowling thrift stores, getting crafty, watching documentaries and eating buffalo wings.

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