The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
I was lead to believe that information science was ontopic, but it appears that most of the questions have to do with libraries. For example, would topics related to eDiscovery be offtopic even though they fall within the domain of information science? If so, what sub-domains of information science are ontopic, and how does one test to confirm the topics presented fit within those terms?
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It's up to the community that forms. Certainly there was discussion during the proposal phase that suggested that it was on-topic.
I would suggest that it should be on-topic. That said, since there are more librarians in the world than there are information science academics, I suspect that library-oriented content will dominate.
Someone else may want to post an answer arguing the opposite, so that users can decide.
Sure why not.
I originally thought of information science as data classification which seems related to libraries. I then looked on wikipedia (librarians please don't cringe) and found "However, it is actually a broad, interdisciplinary field, incorporating not only aspects of computer science, but often diverse fields such as archival science, cognitive science, commerce, communications, law, library science, museology, management, mathematics, philosophy, public policy, and the social sciences."
Boy, that's broad. So most of the content here is about libraries, some is about information science related to libraries. And some is about academic information science as not related to libraries? That feels weird.
As I write the counter opinion, I can't really argue this. As the site grows people will follow the relevant tags and I don't imagine the info science will overshadow the library "core."
Note: I'm not a librarian and not planning to stay with the site in the long run so nothing vested in the outcome either way (I'm a computer programmer but I'd like to see this community succeed. Turns out librarians know more about the stack exchange way than many techies do!)
I would agree that information science should be considered on topic for many of the reasons that participants in this thread Are questions about archives on topic, and should they be solicited somehow? were arguing that questions about archives should be considered on topic.
As libraries increasingly engage in building digital collections and in new services related to data curation and digital humanities, the concerns and perspectives of information science will be important and relevant.
Data representation, knowledge organization, user communities, information behavior, systems analysis ... all these are important information science topics that I would hope an LIS Stack Exchange would engage with.