User:MichelleCUNO/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Information literacy

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen this article to evaluate because it was the topic of our lecture this week as well as the topic of our discussion page and I think it is a very important concept to understand for this class, for college in general and honestly just in life as well. My immediate impression of the article was to be hesitant because as soon as I clicked on it I see that there is a message saying that the article contains "multiple issues". But I also think the article did a good job covering different facets of information literacy and how those pertain to different levels of education.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The first sentence of this article does provide a definition of information literacy from two different sources. Although personally I feel as thought the definition that they selected was not necessarily clear and concise. I believe the ALA definition used in the second paragraph may be a more clear and accessible definition to use as the leading sentence of the article. In the lead section, there is no direct mention or indication of the sections that will be found in the rest of the article. The lead section also does include information that is not found elsewhere in the article, for example mentions of Lori Arp and her contribution to the mindset around information literacy and her calls for further research. Additionally, The Alexandria Proclamation is mentioned briefly in the lead section but the mention of it later in the article does not expand on that information at all, instead it is mentioned even more briefly. I do believe that the lead section is generally concise and not overly detailed.

Content

The information is the article is relevant to the topic and does not stray from the overall theme and message of the article. I would also say that the information seems to be relatively up to date with sources cited from 2020. Of course, the article probably could include even more up to date sources because information literacy has been a hot topic in recent years and I am sure there is a lot of new source material that would be beneficial to this article. I believe there could be more talk about how information literacy is applicable. The only thing mentioned is efforts in K-12 education and efforts in higher education, and these sections are also not very tangible or detailed, very vague and seem to be written by someone who honestly did not understand a lot about the topic and it's nuances. I think it would be valuable to add information about information literacy in the real world, such as pertaining to consuming products, news, politics and more. Information literacy plays a huge role in all facets of life but that is not really elaborated on in this article. There is no mention of equity gaps.

Tone and Balance

I would say there is definitely a balanced tone as the article is just introducing the idea of information literacy and does not seem to be pushing a certain agenda or bias.

Sources and References

The sources seem to vary widely with a couple seeming to be from peer reviewed papers but many being random websites, online articles or magazines. Many are also not necessarily up to date as far as being from 2015-present but all seem to be at least published after 2000. The two references below made me the most confused because one is a seemingly empty page and one does not work at all.

https://thehoneycombers.com/singapore/event/super-s-u-r-e-show-music-pop-culture/

https://veille-et-analyses.ens-lyon.fr/LettreVST/english/17-april-2006_en.php

The sources do not seem the most reliable to me and reminded me of what a student would use as references when turning in a research paper that they procrastinated or did before they understood how to research and how to identify reliable sources. They are pretty random and not enough of them are scholarly.

Organization and Writing Quality

I would say it generally well written and easy to follow as well as to understand. I did not notice any glaring spelling or grammar errors. The organization also was easy to follow and seemed relatively intuitive, I just think more sections could have been added to create a more well rounded understanding of the topic.

Images and Media

No images or media are used in this article

Talk Page Discussion

This page is part of the education and library wiki projects, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Overall Impressions

As I mentioned before I feel like this article has good bones but can be beefed up a lot in order to be strengthened. Using better and more scholarly sources will allow for the writer to go into more detail about information literacy, what it is, how it is used, where it is used and why it is important in and outside of a school setting. I do not think that the article is necessarily poorly developed, just underdeveloped. The strengths in the article are mentioning the Big 6 in detail as well as mentioning several different official definitions of information literacy because it is a nuanced term and multiple definitions will help more people understand how it can be multi faceted.