I also helped organize a week of Wikipedia edit-a-thons in archives and special collections around Boston, for what we called “Open Access to Mass History“. On the one hand, we were not dealing with born-digital or even digitized material, but I see this as a form of public humanities work towards open access to special collections, in that without digital traces researchers will not even know these special collections exist. I also think it’s part of opening up the wealth of information in archival finding aids, and a form of digital public scholarship in synthesizing both the finding aid and other primary sources into a good encyclopedia article. (Which is really hard!) We have grandiose plans to make this a yearly thing — our only complaint is that October is so supremely busy. Plus you might be competing with postseason baseball.

Great post, and thanks for starting the conversation!