Join the CAA community for our first book club gathering! The CAA Pop Culture Book Club will read both popular fiction and non-fiction books that explore how archives, libraries, and collections are understood outside of the archives fields. Many books create an allure and mystery around archives and libraries, yet those of us managing them know how much of the work is dusting and sorting or advocating and budgeting.
Through reading and discussing these books, we will ask what can we, as professionals, learn about the public’s perception of archives and related fields. Can this inform how we engage with the public and advocate for our collections? And what do some of these writers really mean when they say “they dug into the archives”? This book club is inspired by stories from authors like Jorge Luis Borges (The Library of Babel) and E.L. Konigsburg (From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) as well as Samantha Cross’s POP ARCHIVES blog.
The Zoom link will be shared with registrants the day before or day of the event.
For Fall 2026, we are reading:
Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric, and Acts of Evidence - Jenny Rice
If you choose to purchase the book from The Ohio State University Press, you can use the code "RICE" to get a 30% discount on any format. Many thanks to the author and the press for providing this discount to CAA!
Contact CAA at info@chicagoarchivists.org
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