User:Drpencil9/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Digital library

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Digital libraries provide access to information to people all around the world. Digital libraries reach people in underrepresented and poorly economic regions, improving the quality of life of those people. These libraries play an important part in research and education. With digital libraries there is little to no physical limitations. There are several benefits to having digital libraries. The most important reason being that it brings information to those who may not otherwise have access to information.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The introductory sentence was clear and concise. Loaded with details and links, the lead section provides a thorough description and a broad view of what the topic consists of and what it entails. The lead section does not give a brief description of the article's significant areas but explains the details found within each section. For instance, Institutional repositories, digital archives, and copyright are not explicitly mentioned but digital media, photographs, and online databases are. These all consist of the same language that makes up the digital library. However, the major sections could be added to give a more detailed overview of what the article conveys. The article is long and very in-depth. Adding more to the lead section would be adding greater clarity to the extensive article.

Content

The content is relevant to the topic, with an excellent historical foundation at the beginning and the next section is Terminology. The Terminology section is a very brief response to a vast subject of what the section could be. There is quite a bit regarding Terminology, but this is a perfect start. The following section is regarding the different types of digital libraries, what they feature, and software, metadata, and digital preservation. One of the sections features drawbacks to digital libraries and the challenges that come along with them. Finally, the article ends with the future development of digital libraries. There are fifty-one references and additional reading as well as External links. This article does hit every aspect of digital libraries. Interestingly, the article does not refer to equity gaps or the underrepresented, but the topic does bridge many of those gaps, and that information should be updated more often within the article.

Tone and Balance

The content also has a neutral and balanced tone which is what I would call academic. The following is natural, starting with the history and ending in the final paragraph with the future of digital libraries. I believe that the article provides a lot of information about a topic that can perhaps never be fully complete. The foundation of digital libraries depends highly on technology and keeping up with the constantly changing nature of those technologies. The article is educational and does not try to persuade the reader in favor of any position but gives an overview of what the topic is, how it came into being, and where the future of digital libraries is going. The article is purely informative and not opinionated.

Sources and References

The sources and references appear to be vast and comprehensive at first glance. In the section marked See Also, there is a list of other links that direct you back to their Wikipedia article page. There are nine topics listed, and almost all of them are pages with very little descriptive information. Any of these would be perfect candidates for articles that genuinely need improvement and clarity. Nine is a relatively small number for the depth of the topic, and editors could add several more to make the list a more robust set of resources. More topics should be added that have more in-depth information and offer an excellent contribution to the subject. I found one that had sections with no citations at all. The references section has several journal articles, peer reviews, and books. All the links appear to work and direct the reader back to the correct information. The references are not as recent as one would hope for a reasonably new type of library. A small number of the references are dated 2020, but mostly the articles are eight years old or older. As much as technology has changed, the authorities are outdated and have come a long way since 2018. This lack of information tells me that there is a large amount of current information missing concerning technology. The author mentioned only two books under the Further Reading section. This section is also sadly understating the amount of data that is out there. There were many External Links with good substantial articles attached to them. These said articles are long, extensive, and have a good number of working and current resources. Overall, I think that the article is probably too small for the subject at hand.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article was well written, concise, and easy to read. The grammar could use some tweaking. Commas are missing, some words are missing, and some spaces need editing. Overall, the spelling and grammatical errors do not detract from the subject or the integrity of the topic. However, no errors should always be the goal if possible. The article is organized into sections, and the author made bullet points within those sections. The quality of the writing is academic, and the errors were few with good organization.

Talk Page Discussion

The Talk Page is divided into several sections and many with only one response in them. The conversation was not as kind, and there was even a cuss word or two. The article failed to flare my emotions, but some people were outraged. Some people posted on the wrong page and added nothing to the discussion. Someone believed that the article was biased towards a particular project. Others found issues with citations that I did not see. There appears to be a discussion regarding non-digital electronic libraries. (Sounds like an oxymoron.) I Googled non-digital electronic libraries and did not find anything. So, I am not sure what they are talking about, but it could be a real thing. I think for the depth of the topic that the talk page is also lacking in content.

Overall Impressions

After a complete review of the article, I found it to be incomplete and lacking in a lot of information. The article is not of poor in quality, but the topic is dense and vast making the article much too short for what it really should be. Digital libraries are so much more than what is mentioned here. There were no photographs, no statistics, no examples of what a digital library genuinely is and does for the community. I found all the links to work, the format and organization to be strong making the article easy to read. However, the article needs more information, more media, and updated sources.

Images and Media

This article contained no images or media.