Death Library

Online death resources

Everybody needs a map to get them started when looking for information. Knowing where to go to find relevant and trustworthy information and resources makes the job so much easier.

Over four years, we have been collecting what D2L participants think is useful. They have shared what they have found to be practical, quirky and meaningful when navigating the web for information about death and dying.

Advance care planning
- Advance Care Planning Australia website provides conversation starters, resources and information to assist in preparing an advance care plan.
- Dying to Talk encourages Australians of all ages and levels of health to talk about dying – to have a conversation with loved ones about your end-of-life wishes will help them to make decisions on your behalf should you be unable to communicate your wishes.
  - Dying to Talk discussion starters
- My Values website was developed by Dr Charlie Corke, an Australian intensive care doctor. This site takes you through a process to clarify what is important to you, so you can understand the values that underlie your own thinking on matters related to death and dying.
- The CareSearch website has information about Advance Care Planning and advance directives to communicate a plan for care at the end of life.
Bereavement and loss
- Good Grief organisation aims to provide free support to people after the death by providing resources about grief including tips and support for many different grief-related topics (eg., how to tell a child someone has died; ways to care for yourself while caring for others; navigating the holidays).
- Modern Loss is a website welcoming candid conversations about grief, providing many resources, articles and personal stories about grief. You can write and submit your own story about grief, which the website may publish.
Communities and networks exploring death and dying
- Compassionate Communities Network is an international movement that aims to build community capacity to support people approaching the end of their lives.
  - Find out more information by visiting the Compassionate Communities Facebook page.
Death conversations and community events
- Before I Die … Walls is a global art project that invites people to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in public, by writing what they want to do before they die on a public wall.
  - Watch Candy Chang presenting her TED Talk Before I die I want to.. (5:32mins) describing what happened when she turned an abandoned house in her community into a giant ‘Before I Die’ chalkboard.
  - Before I Die Project – Information about building a wall in your community
- Death Cafes are events where people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death.
  - Listen to Waleed Aly’s Coffee, cake and mortality Podcast (6:26mins) from ABC Radio National Drive program.
- Dying to Know Day (D2KDay) is held on August 8 each year. Proveda coordinates Dying to Know Day (D2KDay) aiming to bring to life conversations and community actions around death, dying and bereavement.
- National Palliative Care Week is an annual event organised by Palliative Care Australia to raise awareness and understanding about palliative care in the Australian community.
- The Departure Lounge was created to start a conversation about the end of life and how we can support people to have a ‘good death’ in the future.
Digital facts and figures
- Years You Have Left to Live, Probably is an animated infographic from Flowing Data that shows how the cookie crumbles in terms of the risk of you dying, when you will die and what you will die of according to your age.
- Extraordinary diagram from Information is Beautiful shows 20th Century Death using a range of data sources to estimate and categorise the total number of deaths for the whole of the twentieth century.
Digital futures
- For those of you who have a passionate interest in digital health futures, the Medical Futurist is a fascinating site that looks at trends and challenges as medicine and technology collide.
- Explore how the future of health will be driven by digital transformation in this Future of Health video.
Digital legacy
- DeadSocial is a website about end-of-life planning in today’s digital world. A social enterprise providing creative initiatives and many resources to help you plan your digital legacy.
Engaging with death through humour
- Dumb Ways to Die (3:01mins) was originally created by Metro Trains Melbourne as a campaign to increase train awareness which then became a hugely popular online game.
- Dying for a Laugh (6:22mins) is a short film produced by Greater Manchester Mental Health (UK), with comedians tackling the biggest taboo of them all – death.
- Watch Monty Python’s memorable and enduringly funny Dead Parrot Skit (3:28mins) first filmed in 1969.
Exploring death and dying as part of life
- TED Talks are an innovative way of exploring death and dying from the perspective of different people with different views of accepting or making death a part of a life well lived.
  - Let’s talk about dying (13 mins) is presented by Dr Peter Saul an Australian Intensive Care Specialist expressing the need to make clear our preferences for end of life care.
- The Order of the Good Death is a website focussing on fears of death by exploring anxiety of death, grief and the afterlife. This website provides access to blogs, videos and podcasts on interesting aspects that you may not have thought about including body decomposition.
- The Bucket’s mission is to help people lead more fulfilling lives by embracing their own mortality
- You can also Ask a Mortician
- Crash Course Philosophy: Perspectives on Death
Funerals and Memorials
- A Sustainable Guide To Death For The Living blog explores the impact of death on climate change and sustainability.
- A grave business written by Suzanne Bearne on the BBC News website investigates the increasing popularity of alternative funerals.
- ABC News questions where is an appropriate place to hold a funeral?, a decision faced by local councils as mouners move away from traditional towards personalised funerals.
- Benjamin Law’s Dead, wrapped in cardboard discusses funeral tourism and the increased popularity of natural funerals in Queensland in his piece written for The Monthly magazine.
- Changing funeral customs as social-distancing rules change the way we mourn is explored by Jessie Davies in an article on ABC News website.
- Finding inspiration from Marbella’s final resting place is a blog piece authored by Delacy Brown and provides some stunning imagery of Marbella cemetery in Spain.
- Medium-density death is an article written by Julie Power investigating the feasibility of a multistorey mausoleum in Sydney.
- Keeper: Free Online Memorial Sites & Tributes provides the best personalized online memorial sites in memory of a loved one
How we talk about death and dying
- BBC Ideas has a conversation with author Kevin Toolis on Why we need to face our mortality (5:13mins).
- Comedian Adam Hills speaks about the death of his father in the article Clown laughs in the face of death published online in the Sydney Morning Herald.
- Please, no more euphemisms. My mother died is an article written by Jacqui Taffel and published in The Age newspaper speaking to the importance of using the appropiate words to describe death.
- Vast Public Indifference has catalogued 101 Ways to Say “Died”, 101 different phrases that we use instead of saying the word died.
- Whatever you call it, we should all talk about it (1:12 mins) is a short video conversation starter produced by Marie Curie Hospice in the UK.
- The Collective for Radical Death Studies (CRDS) is an international, professional organization formed to decolonize Death Studies and radicalize death practice.
Palliative care
- CarerHelp aims to empower carers to cope with the hard times as well as they can, and to make space for good times as well. When carers feel ready for their role, everybody benefits.
- The Canadian Virtual Hospice provides support and personalized information about advanced illness, palliative care, loss and grief, to people living with illness, family members, people working in healthcare, educators, and researchers.
- Palliative Care Australia is the national peak body for palliative care.
- My Aged Care: End of Life Care provides information and supports for this final stage of life.

Last updated 09 June 2026

Death Library

Online death resources

Advance care planning

Bereavement and loss

Communities and networks exploring death and dying

Death conversations and community events

Digital facts and figures

Digital futures

Digital legacy

Engaging with death through humour

Exploring death and dying as part of life

Funerals and Memorials

How we talk about death and dying

Palliative care