Corralling contributors for an edited volume is no easy task. Adding the extra step of encouraging contributors to communicate and read each other’s chapters is a whole other undertaking.

Toni Samek of the University of Alberta and coeditor Patricia Demers were willing to challenge the writers of their co-edited volume, Minds Alive: Libraries and Archives Now, to read the whole manuscript and interact with each other. Dr. Samek explains that though this communication between contributors required “a little bit of nudging,” it was worth it. “It really I think encouraged some people within our book community to maybe go out and follow up on readings and references and lines of thinking that maybe were not what was in their base.”

In the first episode of this four part series, Dr. Samek discusses the process of finding contributors, organizing chapters, and discovering the through-lines in the final product, Minds Alive, a work of contributed essays that explore the value and import of libraries and archives in our hyper-networked world. Dr. Samek also digs into her background as a professor and former chair at the School of Library and Information Studies, and her own scholarship interests of expressive freedom, human rights, and information ethics.