Open Questions and Challenges

What questions remain to be addressed or questions about memory did this exploration raise for you. What are the things we should pay attention to/discuss in class for future explorations?

One important question that may be left to be answered is how a library may or may not fit in as a place of mourning. If we were to continue further with this project we may decide to take it into another direction, such as a place of records keeping and indexing for certain groups of individuals. This may disconnect it from a personal remembrance that is mainly consumed by friends and family to a more public form of remembrance where unrelated individuals seek out information on these indexed groups. Perhaps after significant world events people in the future would be drawn to this project situated in libraries in order to better understand and/or empathize with affected groups. As well as considering how individuals may interact with the system on a one-time basis, this also forces us to consider how communities might interact with it over a large number of interactions. This approach may do well at encompassing the status-quo of libraries as a place of information and librarians as maintainers and helpful guides for navigating vast amounts of data.

In future related projects, groups may also want to consider how public record keeping as it relates to death could integrate with such a project. Could they be digitally parsed and then be used to automatically index and organize existing profiles for easier access?