William Safire had a column "On Language" in The New York Times for many years which, as I recall, would sometimes get into the etymology of words (which dictionaries like the OED often document to some degree) and phrases--and maybe quotations. I think some of the research was what we would now call crowdsourcing.

Of course, the flip side of this for many people is that if something isn't on the Web it doesn't really exist.