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Wish List - Volunteer Opportunities

Help FoundSF reach a place we can only dream of without your contribution.

In addition to adding material that is of interest to you and your place in history, here's some larger projects we will definitely need some help with:

  • Turn podcasts into pages.

Shaping San Francisco has recorded a few years worth of our Wednesday night talk series. These talks are relevant to material in FoundSF and can have a home here. They just need someone to upload them to related pages. Is that you? Similarly, we have about 100 sound clips from Version 1 that can be included. Streetcar clangs, sewer sounds, and more!

  • Shrink to fit

Some of our photos are practically escaping the screen. Can you format them to not be sneaking off the page? This would require a pretty thorough combing of the site, but think of how worth it to see an entire photo on EVERY page it would be!

  • Curating articles

We cover a lot of themes in Found SF... but as you may have noticed, rather little could really be thought of as "complete." Perhaps there's an area of special interest to you? Or maybe you have an interest that doesn't show up at all (like say, Education, or a particular ethnic group you don't see represented, or college sports, or the Military, or a thorough treatment of anti-war movements through time... there are SO many threads to follow!)... You ARE INVITED to help improve existing content, organize tours through the material, and to bring new research and primary sources into the project. Please write us with your ideas! Or just register and start putting in material!

  • Curating photos

We need your help to assess how photography is presented in the project, and then how to add more content that matches that look and feel. This will include helping us think critically where photography isn't enough and we can do more with it (i.e. slideshows, movies, etc.). You are welcome to add content, but we're not looking to fill the site simply with more photos. We would ask you to be a researcher, include stories about the sites you're photographing, and help us fill out the pages which consist of photos and not much context. You are welcome to take on as much, or as little of this, as you wish.

  • Hindsight Continuua - photos then and now

There are already many of these included in FoundSF.org. You know, the old photo and it's current counterpart, taken from the same vantage point to show how much the landscape and environs have changed over the years? The task here would be to choose a dozen or so of the old photos, research the location, and take a 2009 photo to include in the article in which it's found. This could also lead to a flash conversion of the photos for pages with more than a couple shots through the years.

  • Add material from the SF Media Archive or Prelinger Archive

FoundSF has lots of text, and many photos, but very few moving images. The San Francisco Media Archive and Prelinger Archive have thousands of films and other media materials for us to include in FoundSF. Want to plumb their archives and add any outstanding video clips?

  • Clear our Inbox

We've got stacks of articles, essays, photos, and more piling up on our desk. If you've got an eye for organization and can create concrete TO DO piles out of our stacks, this is the job for you.

  • Mapping it

FoundSF would be so much cooler (and easy to navigate) with a map interface. Think of it: searching any part of the city for points of interest, or the other way round - having a map on each point of interest to tell you where you are. Are you GIS or other mapping savvy?

  • MediaWiki nerds need apply

Some of the MediaWiki programming is a bit beyond us. First off, the navigation bar is a little cluttered, don't you think? Help us clean it up with your mad MediaWiki skills??

If any of the above strike your fancy, please contact us to get started.