Dal alum Allison Munday (BA’19) and Dal Professor Tom Ue, in the Department of English, have co-written an essay for Paper Trails: The Social Life of Archives and Collections, an open access living book edited by Andrew W. M. Smith and published by UCL Press that bridges the gap between research communities “to open up the world of historical research”.

Their essay, titled “In George Gissing’s Footsteps: Co-producing Digital Comparisons,” offers an account of the collaboration behind the preparation of a part of a new edition of George Gissing’s The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, edited by Ue for Edinburgh University Press. Munday, who was hired as a research assistant through an Undergraduate Research Award from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, collaborated with Dalhousie University Libraries to scan and to edit the Fortnightly Review version of Ryecroft, which will be made available through Dalhousie University Libraries as an open access e-book.

Munday’s and Ue’s contribution reveals how the work of an editor, often considered solitary, is in fact inherently collaborative, “his or her project regularly brings together students, fellow researchers, and community members; and it always exists in conversation with all of the editions that came before.