★ Explores the unique liminal role of libraries and archives and reveals the profound connection between memory preservation and collective grief.
★ Combines international cases and interdisciplinary theories to analyze memory loss, historical trauma and public emotional healing in digital and physical archives.
★ Offers innovative practical and theoretical frameworks for cultural institutions to manage commemoration and social grief relief.

Libraries and archives are liminal spaces between what once was and what might be remembered.
This edited collection explores this dynamic through international case studies, theoretical discussions and practical guidance, considering how these spaces activate moments of grief through preservation and documentation. Drawing on cultural, personal and literary perspectives, this volume examines grief across temporalities and the ephemerality of digital and material memory spaces.
This is an essential study that deftly shows how archival practice, critical librarianship and the digital humanities can transform the ways communities preserve memory, process loss and find meaning in the aftermath of grief.

Kaylee P. Alexander
Kaylee P. Alexander is Research Data Librarian at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library.

Robert Spinelli
Robert Spinelli is Archivist for Special Collections at Middle Tennessee State University.

Foreword by Kelly A. Kolar

Introduction - Kaylee P. Alexander and Robert Spinelli

Part I: Loss

1. The Past(s) We Access Online: Ethical Challenges of Digital Archives - Amalia S. Levi and Virginia Dressler
2. The Necrocene and Special Collections: Recording Extinction in Libraries and Archives - Octavia Cade
3. Mysterious Marginalia: Past and Present Grief in The Mysteries of Udolpho - S. R. Trzinski
4. Dead Women Do Tell Tales: The Archived Deaths of St. Bride’s Parish, London - Rebecca Gibson

Part II: Grief

5. Your Most Powerful Instrument Is Your Voice - McKenzie Lemhouse and Logan Cocklin
6. Beyond Tree Funerals: Continuing Work to Make Grief a Transformative Project - Catherine Bowers
7. Public Libraries as Spaces for Processing COVID-19 Grief - Leah Griffiths
8. ‘Shades of Grey’; Or, a Guide to Navigating Grief in the Archive - Frances Cullen
9. Ghosts in Grey Boxes: Trauma and Loss in the Archives - Amanda Shepp

Part III: Commemoration

10. Record Keepers and Record Makers: The Artist in the Archive - Lyuba Basin
11. Out of the Closet and into the Shelves: Archiving the Ordinary in Lesbian Cultural Memory - Sarah Rayner
12. Making a Digital Memorial: What Arts, Culture and Heritage Can Learn from Remember Me (2020) - Eleanor O’Keeffe
13. Forever or for Now: The Role of Information Professionals in Supporting Online Memorialization Practices - Chelsea Gunn and Aisling Quigley
14. Grieving Toward Grace - Michele Jennings and Henry Handley
15. Coda - Robert Spinelli and Kaylee P. Alexander