with comment from the author of Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom.

Thank you, thank you, for all the messages you guys sent me, and the posts you’ve tagged me in. A happy morbidly curious friend over here!

I spoke with author Megan Rosenbloom who wrote the book “Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin” (my book club’s pick for January) about this decision and I love her response:

“It’d be a different situation if there was a repatriation request at play here or a family member of an identified individual or representative of that individual’s known community. There can be respectful stewardship of problematic artifacts that preserve the evidence of past actions, provide context, and allow students and researchers to continue to learn from them, but that is not possible when a few voices can push an institution into destroying objects entrusted to their care. It could also set a precedent for institutions feeling that they must also destroy their anthropodermic books because Harvard did, driving the existence of the rest of these books on the private market further underground, where they might be treated less respectfully and will also be unavailable to researchers. There could be far-reaching implications from this decision.”

This is going to be a domino effect, and I’m not looking forward to the future decisions institutions may make. These books are much safer where they currently are, in my humble opinion.

https://library.harvard.edu/statement-des-destinees-de-lame

https://library.harvard.edu/about/news/2024-03-27/qa-houghton-library-about-book-des-destinees-de-lame