Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Henry Thomas Hamblin

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 no consensus. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:36, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Henry Thomas Hamblin

references are largely self published sources, Not finding much via Google News to support notability and all hits in a Google Books search are to books written by him. RadioFan (talk) 16:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have now included reference to a third party book which mentions Hamblin. Also a third party link (there are more if you google "Hamblin Trust") to show that the trust is widely recognised in the UK as a venue for events relating to complementary living and personal development. The lack of third party material may reflect the fact that the author has been dead over 50 years and non-US New Thought practitioners have tended to be ignored by commentators since "New Thought" has tended to be seen as an American phenomenon. The fact that Hamblin has left a legacy in the form of a working charitable trust (The Hamblin Trust - see website), 50 years after his death, suggests that his work and teaching has acheived a degree of recognition deserving of inclusion in Wikipedia. And the fact that Hamblin was able to attract someone of the calibre of Joel S. Goldsmith to write for his magazine suggest that he had achieved a fair measure of recognition and respect at the time. Shadygrove2007 (talk) 17:00, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete~~ I do not see how those could possibly meet WP:GNG, the only non-trivial is not independent of the subject. They could be used as references for the article but not to establish notability. There needs to be significant in-depth treatment of the subject by reliable sources. Drawn Some (talk) 19:29, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This guy died over 50 years ago, but some of his published works are in libraries in many places, and he has a library of congress collection number. Obscure authors usually have "personal ids" instead of lccns. The fact that several of his books are in multiple major university libraries implies that multiple university librarians thought that his works were worth adding to their collections. His earliest works were published in the 1920's. -Arch dude (talk) 23:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 23:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: as unverifiable hoo-hah. No reliable sources, and while the library argument above is an interesting one, it doesn't appear to be supported by the evidence or by WP policy. — Bdb484 (talk) 00:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Please click on the worldcat link in the external links section of the article (or click here:[1].) Worldcat is a unified database of the catalogs of roughly 50,000 physical brick-and-mortar libraries. From that page, you can click on any of the author's cataloged books to see which libraries hold that book. In addition, the links to the Hanblin foundation are not "self-published:" Hamblin, who died in 1958, is unlikely to have created those web sites :-) As to policy, the meta-policy here is to establish notability, and to establish verifiability via reliable sources. For an author dead more than 50 years, I feel that the availability is multiple major university libraries meets both criteria, since the acquiring librarians are certainly independent, and addition to a library collection is at least as useful an indication of notability as a newspaper article. the problem here is that we simply do not have easy access to secondary sources from the fifty to seventy years ago, so we need to use what we do have in order to counter the systematic bias against old subjects. I will go make this argument at WP:N and at WP:RS. I personally have absolutely no interest in this particular wacko "new thought" guy, and I had never heard of him before his link turned blue on the Project Gutenberg missing arthors missing articles list. Can we please defer the deletion until we have a chance to discuss the policy? -Arch dude (talk) 00:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment what you're referring to is WP:CREATIVE which with poor grammatical form tacks on "had works in many significant libraries". This allows in a lot of authors which is a good thing but then there is the "many" and "significant" to weigh. In this particular case I would honestly say it is only a few significant libraries that hold his works, not many. There are some major university and research libraries among those but few "popular" libraries and no library seems to hold a complete collection of his works. So it is mixed at best. I'll change my opinion from "delete" to neutral because if there is a near-consensus that the number of libraries holding his works is sufficient for notability then I don't want to stand in the way. Still doesn't meet WP:GNG though. Drawn Some (talk) 02:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep a good example of where real-world notability and that which can be verified online can diverge. Good work, Arch dude.--2008Olympian^chitchat 03:36, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the number of libraries that have his books you can't make much of a claim for real-world notability. For most of his books the number of libraries is 3 if I remember correctly, one book had 15 libraries. Not exactly overwhelming popularity out of 50,000 libraries or so. Drawn Some (talk) 09:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The purpose of considering the library holdings is to demonstrate the impact that the person has had on their field. You are correct that its especially useful when considering older subjects which aren't going to have much current coverage available online. Yes that WorldCat link does show that his book is held by some libraries but not especially expansive list. When looking over the list of libraries that hold his publications, I would expect to see some universities with strong theology programs and a couple with complete collection of his works (there are only 8 in the article), but there aren't. This doesn't make a very strong case for notability. Also this search shows books about this author, which there is only 1 and it's an autobiography, not a good sign for notability either.--RadioFan (talk) 12:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep The existence of the books make his career verifiable, the holdings don't show importance one way or another considering the subject and the period. This is not the sort of thing academic or public libraries collect if they possibly help it, but the person may still be notable within the field--a very decidedly non academic field, that doe snot really count as theology. That the material is still being published shows in my opinion just sufficient notability. Survival this long considering the nature of the work is notable. DGG (talk) 04:02, 21 May 2009 (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.