User:Ejohnson1212/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: (link) Digital curation
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.
 * I chose to evaluate this article for several reasons. First, from the outset, the article looks fairly well-done. Secondly, the talk and history page were robust. Third, the topic of digital curation is tied to our course material.

Lead
Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets. Digital curation establishes, maintains and adds value to repositories of digital data for present and future use. This is often accomplished by archivists, librarians, scientists, historians, and scholars. Enterprises are starting to use digital curation to improve the quality of information and data within their operational and strategic processes. Successful digital curation will mitigate digital obsolescence, keeping the information accessible to users indefinitely. Digital curation includes digital asset management, data curation, digital preservation, and electronic records management.

The term curation in the past commonly referred to museum and library professionals. It has since been applied to interaction with social media including compiling digital images, web links and movie files.

Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Yes it does.
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Underneath the main section of the lead, there is a table of contents (not included above). But the actual lead itself does not clearly outline the major sections of the article, namely the challenges of digital curation.
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * No, all of the information is present in the article.
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?
 * For the most part, I think the lead does a good job in introducing the topic. If I were to make any changes, I would move the last section the begins with "the term curation..." to a different section of the article because it does not seem to fit with the rest of the lead.

Lead evaluation 7.5/10

 * Content
 * Guiding questions

Many approaches to digital curation exist, and have evolved over time in response to the changing technological landscape. Two examples of this are sheer curation and channelization[citation needed].

Sheer curation is an approach to digital curation where curation activities are quietly integrated into the normal work flow of those creating and managing data and other digital assets. The word sheer is used to emphasize the lightweight and virtually transparent nature of these curation activities. The term sheer curation was coined by Alistair Miles in the ImageStore project, and the UK Digital Curation Centre's SCARP project. The approach depends on curators having close contact or 'immersion' in data creators' working practices. An example is the case study of a neuroimaging research group by Whyte et al., which explored ways of building its digital curation capacity around the apprenticeship style of learning of neuroimaging researchers, through which they share access to datasets and re-use experimental procedures.

Sheer curation depends on the hypothesis that good data and digital asset management at the point of creation and primary use is also good practice in preparation for sharing, publication and/or long-term preservation of these assets. Therefore, sheer curation attempts to identify and promote tools and good practices in local data and digital asset management in specific domains, where those tools and practices add immediate value to the creators and primary users of those assets. Curation can best be supported by identifying existing practices of sharing, stewardship and re-use that add value, and augmenting them in ways that both have short-term benefits, and in the longer term reduce risks to digital assets or provide new opportunities to sustain their long-term accessibility and re-use value.[citation needed]

The aim of sheer curation is to establish a solid foundation for other curation activities which may not directly benefit the creators and primary users of digital assets, especially those required to ensure long-term preservation. By providing this foundation, further curation activities may be carried out by specialists at appropriate institutional and organisation levels, whilst causing the minimum of interference to others.[citation needed]

A similar idea is curation at source used in the context of Laboratory Information Management Systems LIMS. This refers more specifically to automatic recording of metadata or information about data at the point of capture, and has been developed to apply semantic web techniques to integrate laboratory instrumentation and documentation systems. Sheer curation and curation-at-source can be contrasted with post hoc digital preservation, where a project is initiated to preserve a collection of digital assets that have already been created and are beyond the period of their primary use.[citation needed]

Channelization is curation of digital assets on the web, often by brands and media companies, into continuous flows of content, turning the user experience from a lean-forward interactive medium, to a lean-back passive medium. The curation of content can be done by an independent third party, that selects media from any number of on-demand outlets from across the globe and adds them to a playlist to offer a digital "channel" dedicated to certain subjects, themes, or interests so that the end user would see and/or hear a continuous stream of content.[citation needed]


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * For the most part, I believe that the content is fairly relevant to the topic. The only section that I found out-of-place was "approaches" (above) which outlined some of the processes of digital curation. In my opinion, this is more of an overview of digital curation and not the place to go into the depth of the different methods used to achieve the goal. Furthermore, one of the methods given, channelization, had no citations. This information seemed to be a better fit on a linked article titled something like "Processes of Digital Curation."
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Yes, all of the information that was used was (for the most part) published in the last ten years.
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?
 * Like mentioned above, I believe that the "approaches" section was out of place. I also think that there was a history section missing. Although the article briefly mentions the history of the term curation in "Core Principles and Activities," the history of digital curation was virtually nonexistent. I think that strengthen the article.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Yes. I couldn't find any cases of a "individual" voice throughout the article.
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * The article was overall favorable toward digital curation, but I did not find that harmful or particularly biased.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * I do not think do.
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?
 * I think that the article attempts to inform the reader of the benefits of digital curation and, in a subtle way, persuade them to support platforms of digital curation. But, overall, the article was fairly neutral.

Sources and References
Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * All of the information, beside the channelization section that was mentioned earlier, have plenty of citations. For the most part, the citations are scientific journals and international newspapers.
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * I believe so. In all, the article had 34 sources. The citations covered a variety of different publications, journals, and topics. This variety and multiplicty of sources gives the article more merit.
 * Are the sources current?
 * Yes. For the most part, the sources are from within the last ten years.
 * Check a few links. Do they work?
 * I checked five random sources. Four worked and one was not found.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * The "approaches" section is clunky to read. But the other sections are broken down into concise sections. The authors also used lists and bullet points to convey their information well.
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * I did not find any.
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?
 * Yes, there are clear sections with relevant information underneath them. But, as stated earlier, I think that the "approaches" section is poorly written and unnecessary.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * It does not.
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * N/A
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * N/A
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way
 * N/A

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * There were a few posts about the modification of external links and change in organization. The most interesting post was about the inclusion of a biocuration link within the article. The people who were speaking about it believed it to be apart of Digital Curation. After some deliberation, they decided to add it to the "see also" section at the end of the article. I think this was a smart decision because although biocuration is a related topic, it is not appropriate to include all of the information about biocuration under the digital curation page.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * The article is rated C-class, low importance. It is apart of following WikiProjects: Libraries, Digital Preservation, and Collections Care.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * We have not talked specifically about digital curation in class, but this page was a great introduction into the term and tied directly into ideas such as technnoploy and structuration.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * I think, overall, the article is fairly good but could be improved with some editing.
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * The article is well-written and uses sources/ links very well. The article is well-organized and remains unbiased.
 * How can the article be improved?
 * Some of the content in the article does not belong (approaches) and I think it would be strengthened with a "history" section. There citations missing within the "approaches" section as well. I also think it could be improved with the addition of photos.
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?
 * I think that the article is complete, but could use some editing to make it 100 percent polished.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

with four tildes — ~


 * Link to feedback: Talk:Digital curation