Charged by the NISO Board with helping us to identify and prioritize concrete actions in support of DEIA in the information community, our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Committee started by carrying out a community survey. We received over 200 responses, and one of the main needs identified was better metadata in support of DEIA.
As a first step toward addressing this need, the Committee decided to run a series of workshop/webinars, open to everyone in the information community, with the goal of both helping educate people about the importance of metadata for DEIA, and identifying specific ways that NISO could better support this.
The first event took place on October 4/5 and, like the upcoming ones, it was run twice to accommodate those working in all time zones. The two sessions were moderated by DEIA Committee Co-Chairs, Karim Boughida, University of Rhode Island Libraries and Maria Stanton, Atla. We were privileged to hear from three expert speakers — Treshani Perera, University of Kentucky, Merrilee Proffitt, OCLC Research Library Partnership, and Brian M. Watson, University of British Columbia School of Information and Homosaurus Editorial Board.
