Story:

Stacy Pratt McDermott can't wait to get back on the road again.

An assistant editor with The Papers of Abraham Lincoln project, McDermott will drive from Springfield, Ill. to central New York with one goal in mind: to digitize Honest Abe-related documents held in approximately 10 locations.

One of the stops on her "Lincoln tour" is the Seward House, 33 South St., Auburn. On Wednesday, McDermott and Christopher Schnell, another assistant editor with the project, will scan a total of four documents there, one of which is William Seward's appointment to serve as Lincoln's secretary of state.

Peter Wisbey, executive director of the Seward House, is excited to be associated with The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, a long-term venture dedicated to locating, transcribing and presenting documents from Lincoln's life.

Estimated to take 10 to 20 years to complete, McDermott and her colleagues are traveling around the nation -- and eventually to foreign locales like Japan and Canada -- to scan all letters and documents written by or to the nation's 16th president.

The project is sponsored by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and the University of Illinois at Springfield.

"It's really an amazing process that tens of thousands of documents will be a part of this," Wisbey said. "It's exciting for us, our little house museum, to be a part of this national effort."

For a full report on this story, please read Monday's editon of The Citizen.