I have a new chapter out! “The Necrocene and Special Collections: Recording Extinction in Libraries and Archives” is available in the recently published volume Libraries, Archives and Collective Grief, edited by Kaylee P. Alexander and Robert Spinelli, published by Bristol University Press.
A lot of my creative work deals with ecological grief, so when I saw the call for papers for this project a couple of years back, my mind instantly went to how libraries curate that specific type of grief in their collections. For the most part my academic work tends to focus on how speculative fiction talks about science, so this was something of a departure for me, but as I said: ecological grief is a focus, and I’ve spent a lot of my life in libraries, researching various things, so I thought I’d give it a go.
I was really pleased when the abstract was accepted. It’s a fascinating concept for an academic collection. Libraries and archives have typically always been public spaces, places where ideas are presented and debated. Places where they are, specifically, curated, and there are a number of libraries around the world who have put on themed exhibitions – either on their own or in collaboration with museums and other organisations – about extinction, extinct species, and the human response to their loss. Given that we are living in the age of what Elizabeth Kolbert calls the “sixth extinction”, these are timely conversations to have.
I’m happy to be part of them.