Talk:Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Article issues

I have just done some preliminary clean up of the formatting and tagged it with a couple of issues tags. Both tags relate to the same issue - at the moment all but two of the references provided are self references ie the SI's own website. Per WP:RS, self references are not reliable sources so we will need other sources to support notability.  – ukexpat (talk) 01:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Huh. I went searching for some and there's surprisingly little. It's like nobody outside SI has much to say about SIL that I can find -- yet a web search turns up a ton of things that are sourced from, hosted by, or indexed by SIL.

It's frustrating. Thought I found something, but it turns out to be a press release from SIL ([1]) -- copied all over the place. In another tantalizing tidbit ([2]) the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia says the SIL "are the greatest museum and library system in the world" but other than that doesn't seem to have much to say.

Another "almost but maybe not quite" tidbit: "Wheldon & Wesley card index donated to Smithsonian Institution Libraries". ARCHIVES OF NATURAL HISTORY. ISSN 0260-9541. (I haven't read the article, it's not available free; I suspect it doesn't say much either.)

I'm posting this mainly in case somebody can use this info (or decides that the sources I've found are better than they seem to me). If not, well, sorry. -- Why Not A Duck 02:02, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Most of the references I listed are from the Smithsonian Libraries because the Smithsonian Libraries's resources (databases, educational content, etc.) are located mostly on the Smithsonian Libraries' pages, and the institution itself is the most reliable source on its own policies. The article does not contain opinions, evaluative statements, or statements about facts that are hard to verify. But I see your point and will work on this. Meaningofitall (talk) 02:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

That's not quite the issue - in order to meet Wikipedia's inclusion requirements, the article must demonstrate the notability of the subject, and to do that you need "significant coverage" in reliable sources. – ukexpat (talk) 02:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia says "it is important to not just consider whether notability is established by the article, but whether it readily could be. [...] Wikipedia articles are not a final draft, and an article can be notable if such sources exist even if they have not been added at present." I added a few and will be adding more. I welcome comments. Meaningofitall (talk) 03:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Comments: I'm wondering where the original page that I created went to? I can't seem to go back in the revision history to the full page. This was a fully cited page (from published articles) on the overall history and formation of Smithsonian Libraries. Most of the original sources for the this article are not online (or only referenced from the Smithsonian Libraries' website).

Kalfatovic (talk) 15:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Martin Kalfatovic, 4/28/09

Merging Smithsonian Institution Archives into this article

Merging the Smithsonian Institution Archives into the Smithsonian Libraries article, in line with the December 2020 announcement that the organization would now be known as the "Smithsonian Libraries and Archives". See the announcement at: Introducing the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. Skvader (talk) 23:16, 6 February 2022 (UTC)