Talk:British Studies Seminar, University of Texas at Austin

United States: Texas / Austin / University of Texas at Austin Mid‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	Texas portal This article is supported by WikiProject Texas (assessed as Low-importance).
	Texas portal This article is supported by WikiProject Texas - Austin (assessed as Low-importance).
	Texas portal This article is supported by WikiProject Texas - University of Texas at Austin (assessed as Mid-importance).

Some problems

Looking at the incomplete version of the article going through 1979 only, I've seen some problems.

Is the article about the Seminar, or about the Program? If it is about the seminar it should be moved to its official name, if about the program, to that title. (given our extreme reluctance to accept articles on individual academic departments and programs, perhaps it might best be about the Seminar; I rewrote one sentence about the Program on that basis.)
Is this perhaps copied or paraphrased in full or in part from some web site or previous publication? If so, it either must be formally licensed by whoever holds the copyright according to the full details at WP:DCM, or it must be entirely rewritten. The use of the long quote to describe the general setting is rather longer than we usually like in an article body. It would, however, certainly be acceptable as a footnote.
Some of the lectures since 2006 are available from the UT site as recordings [1].This should be mentioned in the lede; in addition, there should be links to these from the corresponding lectures when the list reaches that date.
On what basis have the lectures here been chosen? Are they the ones published in the series of books described in the article? If so, it should be specified & the reference given in each case case. (The books themselves also need exact publication data, which can be given as a reference using WorldCat.) (If only some of them have been published there, they should of course be specified.)
1. Another basis for rational inclusion would seem to be those lectures given by people who are considered notable in Wikipedia, or obviously should be (in which case red links can be used so the articles can be encouraged).
2. Another possible basis is that these are the lectures given by the visiting scholars at the Ransome Center
3. Or , of course, some combination.
The formatting by individual terms sections will give an over-long table of contents. I used a formatting trick to give bold subheadings without t of c entries--preceding the subheading with a semicolon. I then added section headings for decades, to help navigation.
I think we usually deprecate using bold face for authors of individual lectures, unless the material is so extensive that it is really a subheading. For those with articles, the formatting given by the link is sufficient. For those without, using an external link or a redirect to a list instead is not really good practice. The external link should rather be used to reference the brief description of who the person is. I have not made these changes yet.
There may be a problem about notability . I think I am likely to have some trouble defending this one if it is nominated for deletion, as is very possible (We have almost never kept articles on lecture series). To argue notability , the article would need to answer two questions: why is this material for an encyclopedia, rather than the Seminar's web page , and, what is the evidence that people outside the University consider this group notable. It cannot be assumed that because some of the lectures are given by distinguished people, or published in book form by the Seminar itself, that this automatically provides notability--though both factors will help. There should be some outside references in various publications or newsletters in the field. Someone associated with the Seminar is more likely to know them than I am. If they're substantial enough, they'll show notability. I hope we can do that--it would be a good precedent for similar articles.

I'll be around to help on this. DGG ( talk ) 06:15, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I stumbled on this article while changing talk page templates. In addition to the place oriented template, there should be a subject template, too. "British Studies" means what? Anything about the United Kingdom, and therefore the subject template should be the UK template? Please help me out here, and better yet, just add the appropriate template for me. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:38, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]