Autograph book was a Social sciences and society good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
This article is short, but there is already more information here than a dictionary definition. i.e.,, the reference to the Princeton collection and the reason for decline in popularity. I don't know much about the subject, but I added it hoping others would add more to this. The subject matter definitely seems to warrant an encyclopedia article and not just a definition. Since this article already contains much more information than the transwikied dictionary definition, it does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion.--Bkwillwm (talk) 04:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The main problem here is the lead. The lead of an article should summarise the rest of the article, briefly covering everything that is mentioned later on. There are a number of things you've included in the lead that are not found elsewhere in the article (modern variations and uses of autograph books is the most important one), and there are parts of the article that do not get mentioned in the lead (particularly the design and format). A good guide for the lead is to have a paragraph on each major section of the article, summarising that section. At present, the lead does not meet the guideline for lead sections; it can with some improvement.
2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
Good.
2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
Your sources are ok - not brilliant, but enough to pass GA standards - and everything that might be contentious is referenced. For further improvement, you might want to reference some of the claims you make in the lead (but this should be resolved if you expand the article anyway). Also, some book sources wouldn't go amiss.
The last sentence in your lead, "Today's autograph books are typically found in the hands of children collecting signatures from their favorite cartoon celebrities in amusement parks", seems like original research to me. The main issue here, however, is that the article needs to be expanded to include modern use of autograph books; doing this should lead you to find reliable sources for this anyway.
This is probably the main problem: you deal with the history really well, and the function/design is decent detail, but there's nothing on modern incarnations of the autograph book (except for the problematic bit in the lead). Find some information about how autograph books are used now - what form they take, the role of the internet, the impact of celebrity culture, etc. That seems to be the only obviously missing thing; adding a section on this, reliably sourced, would probably resolve all the other problems the article has.
3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
This is fine.
4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
No bias at all.
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
No evidence of edit warring.
6.Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
Images are used well to illustrate the topic and have good captions.
7. Overall assessment.
I'm afraid that this article does not pas our GA criteria at this time. There are some key areas that you can work on, as I've outlines above, which should bring this article easily within GA standards. You've done a great job so far, and you're really not far off - keep going!
