The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. I'm closing this for now as Keep and I will let y'all hash it out on the talk page(s) regarding merge. Thanks for assuming good faith. Missvain ( talk) 20:34, 4 December 2020 (UTC) reply

The Emmett Leahy Award

The Emmett Leahy Award (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log)

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Very few of the people given this award are notable, nor is there any 3rd party sources to show that the award itself is. Emmet Leahy himself might be notable, but we do;t have an article on him--just the final paragraph here, where the only actual ref is a quote from his organization. I'd support moving that part to draft. DGG ( talk ) 01:10, 11 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. Robert McClenon ( talk) 06:07, 11 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Robert McClenon ( talk) 06:07, 11 November 2020 (UTC) reply

• Comment: Emmett Leahy is notable and deserves an article (see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]) but that is irrelevant. The award clearly is the most important in the obscure discipline of records management. There are plenty of sources that report "John Doe won the prestigious Emmett Leahy Award for his groundbreaking work on blah blah blah..." These all give short explanations of the award, typically boilerplate. I do not see independent sources that discuss the award itself in any depth. I am not sure we should expect that. If List of Emmett Leahy Award winners were combined with this article the result may be worth keeping. Three of the winners are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles: Trudy Huskamp Peterson, Luciana Duranti and Charles M. Dollar. Probably some of the others deserve articles, but archivists are sadly neglected in Wikipedia. Aymatth2 ( talk) 20:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Aymatth2, the only refs in the article saying "John Doe won the prestigious Emmett Leahy Award for his groundbreaking work on blah blah blah..." are press releases. DGG ( talk ) 06:26, 21 November 2020 (UTC) reply

DGG, the article needs improvement. I could do that, if it survives. I started articles for Emmett Leahy and two more of the winners: Adrian Cunningham and Kenneth Thibodeau. I may do one or two others. Their entries in the list could have refs like

• Reed, Barbara (26 April 2019), "Adrian Cunnningham (1960–)", in Duranti, Luciana; Franks, Patricia C. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Archival Writers, 1515 - 2015, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, ISBN  978-1-5381-2580-9
• Kenneth Thibodeau, Candidate for Council, Society of American Archivists, 22 December 2011, retrieved 2020-11-19

Hundreds of thousands of people are employed in records management. It is an important activity, and the Emmett Leahy Award appears to be the main award for leading practitioners and theoreticians. I do not see that a huge amount can be said about the award itself. It seems legitimate. The sponsor is Preservica, a digital archiving company, but they do not seem to be using it for advertising. Winners are selected by a committee of past winners. The winners' bios always mention the award.

I would cut out most of the fluff from the article, with sources for what is left, and make it primarily a list of winners. I think it may have value as a list of leaders in the records management field. Aymatth2 ( talk) 12:07, 21 November 2020 (UTC) reply

• Keep: I agree that the mentions of this award are usually short and included as part of a bio entry for a subject matter expert in this field. However, this award very consistently seems to deserve mention in such a bio. I would firstly argue that this makes this award notable, at least in this field. Maybe more importantly, as I read some of those bios, I would have very possibly asked myself about this award, and if this article is deleted, I’d likely stay in the dark as to what it is. Therefore, I would like to keep this encyclopedic article.-- Concertmusic ( talk) 20:54, 28 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Merge to a new "Legacy" section of the Emmett Leahy article. The very brief mentions are not evidence of WP:SIGCOV and WP:ITSUSEFUL is not a reason for keeping independently of the parent article. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:21, 1 December 2020 (UTC) reply
• Keep. The list, particularly if expanded to hold earlier award winners, would be too long for the Emmett Leahy article. Also, the award does not have much to do with Emmett Leahy, apart from his name as an eminent pioneer in records management. But as Concertmusic points out, a number of award winners have articles that mention the award, so there is value in a description of it. Aymatth2 ( talk) 22:32, 1 December 2020 (UTC) reply
• Selective merge to Emmett Leahy, per Eggishorn. If there is no independent coverage of the award itself, it fails WP:N, and we should not retain a standalone. Just because some notable people have won it does not therefore imbue the award itself with notability - especially if those sources that mention the award are mere press releases, as DGG points out. ♠ PMC♠ (talk) 04:49, 4 December 2020 (UTC) reply

There is independent coverage in many sources about winners of the award that briefly describe the award itself. The coverage is shallow but broad. Aymatth2 ( talk) 14:11, 4 December 2020 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.