Are questions like "What is your most used feature in an ILS" on-topic?

Just to frame this question a bit: I'm a software developer who recently started working in a university library and I have a lot of questions regarding the regular workflows in a library.

Now I image a lot of this questions would be (very) subjective, for example:

1. What is your most used feature, when working with metadata in an ILS?
2. What feature you miss most from your ILS, when working with metadata?
3. What innovative library websites do you know, and what feature do you find well executed there?
4. Free bibliographic metadata sources (links, sites)?

and so on.

Questions 1. and 2. would help me to get a picture of typical requirements, especially concerning metadata. I talk about that with my colleagues, but to hear more opinions would be great.

Question 3. looks too broad to me, although I admit, I'd love to get answers from library professionals (as opposed to say visitors or software developers).

Question 4. could maybe the most on topic.

Would the questions above be suitable for this site?

miku

• discussion

Comments

Answer by KatieR

The way first two are worded is way too subjective. I would suggest talking directly to the librarians you are working with. You'll get a better idea of their specific needs.

One way to worst could be "In a university library setting, what is an effective method of seeking out metadata?" or "are there any known and proven methods of seeking out metadata using [insert ILS] here?"

Question four is simply a list question and those are also off topic in the SE world.

Comments

• miku: Thanks! I see - I'll have to be more specific in my questions, which I guess is just a bit harder, if one is new to a field.
• KatieR: I can understand that & it is appreciated that you ask in meta first to hammer out exactly what is on topic. Even if you wanted to ask "What resources are considered high quality regarding [insert topic here]". Just make sure you mention what kind of library you're working in when asking questions, otherwise you'll get comments about it being "too broad" since there are so many different kinds of libraries.