User:Coryannyyz/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I am the instructor of an upper level undergraduate and graduate class called "Museum Anthropology." A goal of our interaction with Wikipedia is to improve its coverage of topics related to museum anthropology. Institutional histories of anthropology museums are among the topics students may choose from to evaluate, improve or begin new articles. Following paths from the Anthropology Wikiproject, the Penn Museum is the only article I found about an anthropology museum in the United States. However, it is not the only article about an American anthropology museum. A search for Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology brought up this article: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, which is also rated stub class. Seeking museums through Category links might be more productive.

Evaluate the article
Lead section

Rating: Start

Weaknesses: The lead section is too short and it is not representative of what the article contains. It highlights only one particular collection, suggesting that is the only or most important thing about the museum, which is untrue.

Recommendations: Add a few sentences to the lead section to summarize each section within the article. This will solve both the length and the coverage issues. The second paragraph of the History section might serve better in the Lead section.

Content

Rating: Stub

Weaknesses: Like the lead, the content is weighted towards archaeology and only some of the Collections sections are adequately covered. The history section jumps from the founding and early expeditions to the 21st century with no 20th century coverage. The entries in the Collections sections are very uneven – some are very short with uneven coverage or exclusive focus on one aspect or even one artifact. The entries in the Collections section do not match the current organization of the collections as seen on the Penn Museum website ( https://www.penn.museum/about-collections/curatorial-sections ). Much recent activity regarding the museum’s human remains collections is not represented. The museum’s affiliated research centers are not included and the online collections portal is not mentioned, and its link is mistakenly given as a link to the collections page (which should link to the overview instead).

Recommendations: The history and collections sections need significant expansion to address omissions and unbalanced coverages. The collections section should be updated to reflect current divisions and links should be fixed to represent both the overview and the online collections portal. Update section on the Morton Collection.

Tone and Balance

Rating: Stub

Weaknesses: Significant lack of Native American voices represented. This is particularly egregious because of the intense focus on museum decolonization in the North American context in North American museum anthropology. Ethnography is generally less represented than archaeology.

Recommendations: New sections and expanded sections needed to represent neglected areas.

Sources and References

Rating: Stub

Weaknesses: The references are very uneven in terms of both quality and coverage throughout the article’s sections. With regard to quality, most of the links are to newspaper articles and the PM website. This would be fine if balanced with references from peer reviewed publications. The PM newsletter, Expedition, is peer reviewed and readily available on the PM site and through academic libraries. Other museum-focused journals and books probably contain information about PM. Another problem with the quality is that some of the citations are not complete, including only a link and not the reference information. With regard to coverage, within the 34 citations, some sections receive more than others. For example, 8 of the total 34 citations are for the section on the MOVE Bombing Victim Remains, while only 1 reference is for the history section, and it was published in 1940. Some of the links don’t work.

Recommendations: This article needs a total overhaul of research based on reliable sources. All the existing references need to be checked, and both existing and new material needs additional and better references.

Organization and Writing

Rating: Start

Weaknesses: The main weakness is the article’s organization. In terms of existing sections, those in the history section seem arbitrary and incomplete. Some affiliations and initiatives are mentioned incidentally within other sections where they are lost among the other text.

Recommendations: It would be helpful if sections were added for the PM’s affiliations and initiatives. A section on PM’s Physical Anthropology Division should be created, and the sections on HOME Bombing Victim Remains and the Morton Collection should be moved to subsections of it.

Images and Media

Rating: C-class

Weaknesses: Some of the images lack useful captions. These could help connect the images with the text better. More images would be helpful to represent all of the collection areas in the PM.

Recommendations: Create an image gallery with representative images from each of the curatorial areas of the PM. Revise captions to existing images.

Talk page discussion

Rating: Stub

Weaknesses: Although the article is associated with 9 projects, it is rated either Low or Mid Importance for all of them. This may explain why most of the discussions have no replies. Some of them are very specific and idiocentric, while for others, it is not clear whether the issues have been addressed. For example, in 2011 and 2020 contributors noted the need to fix the history section, yet it remains with the same issues in 2023 as it did then.

Recommendations: Interest in anthropology and natural history museums needs to be drummed up in the related project pages. Contributing to Wikipedia needs to become a priority for related disciplines in order to improve these disciplinary perspectives within Wikipedia.

Overall impressions

Rating: Start

Weaknesses: Missing critical information about the institution’s history and about important aspects of its collections and programming.

Recommendations: Needs major revisions.