From Nextgov: National Archives' first Wikipedian to bring more to the public
Graduate student Dominic McDevitt-Parks is using his summer fellowship to begin organizing Wikipedia's volunteer workforce around the institution's vast holdings.
In January 1874, early feminist icon Susan B. Anthony petitioned Congress to remit a fine she'd received for illegally voting in the 1872 presidential election, 47 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the franchise.
Until recently, anyone hoping to read that petition would have been limited to a few scanned pages from the original document posted on the National Archives website or would have had to travel to Washington to take a look at the source document itself.
Earlier this summer, though, the National Archives' first Wikipedian in residence, graduate student Dominic McDevitt-Parks, put out a call to volunteer transcribers on Wikisource, the user-generated online encyclopedia's sister site for primary documents, who banded together to turn Anthony's 19th century curlicued script into simple, searchable Web text. The document is now awaiting a final validation before it goes online.