Megan Curran Rosenbloom[1] (born 1981)[2] is an American medical librarian and expert on anthropodermic bibliopegy, the practice of binding books in human skin.[3] She is a team member of the Anthropodermic Book Project, a group which scientifically tests skin-bound books to determine whether their origins are human.[4] Rosenbloom is the author of Dark Archives, a 2020 non-fiction book on the history, provenance, and myths about books bound in human skin.[5]
Through her library work, Rosenbloom had access to a large number of old and rare medical books that were also about death.[7] She began doing public lectures on the way the history of medical advancements is intertwined with the use of nameless corpses and met Caitlin Doughty; together they curate Death Salon events.[8] Rosenbloom believes the more people deny the inevitability of death, "the more people are psychically destroyed when it happens in their lives."[9] She co-founded and directs Death Salon, the events arm of The Order of the Good Death where people can have conversations and discussions with others about death.[10] Death Salons are a mix of private Order of the Good Death business and public events, happening nearly annually since 2013.[11][12]
As a member of the Anthropodermic Book Project, Rosenbloom and her colleagues Daniel Kirby, Richard Hark and Anna Dhody use peptide mass fingerprinting to determine if the binding on books is of human origin.[13] Rosenbloom is part of the outreach team, trying to convince rare book libraries to have their books tested.[13]
^"Rosenbloom, Megan". LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress). June 8, 2020. Archived from the original on December 22, 2021. Retrieved November 2, 2020.
^"The Team". The Anthropodermic Book Project. October 19, 2015. Archived from the original on January 28, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
^ abPrice, Sallyann (October 22, 2019). "Newsmaker: Megan Rosenbloom". American Libraries Magazine. Archived from the original on May 28, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
^"About Us". Death Salon. November 4, 2013. Archived from the original on April 13, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
^Hayasaki, Erika (October 25, 2013). "Death Is Having a Moment". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on July 27, 2021. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
