Taking a Hands-On Approach to Improving Metadata at the NISO Plus Forum

With the NISO Plus conference now firmly established as an online, you may be wondering why the new NISO Plus Forum will be held in person (September 20 at the AGU office in Washington, DC). The brief answer is that meeting in person provides an opportunity for a different sort of event, one focused on practical, hands-on work and interactions — and one that we hope will result in some concrete outputs and next steps. Our goal is to bring together stakeholders from across the information community — librarians, publishers, service providers, and others — to identify areas of metadata that are of common concern and in need of improvement.

To make sure we achieve this goal, we’ve worked with professional facilitator and NISO Board member, Jonathan Clark (Executive Director of the International DOI Foundation), to develop a day of World Cafe-style small group discussions and activities, examining three core aspects of metadata — structures, exchange, and identifiers. Jonathan has kindly agreed to tell us a bit more about the methodology and his plans for the day.

Please can you tell us a bit about yourself — your background and experience of both metadata and training/facilitation?
I’m Jonathan Clark. I was a scientist a long time ago before joining Elsevier where I stayed for 20 years before starting my own business. Nowadays I design, produce, and run events for all sorts of organizations all over the world. I’ve been involved in the DOI Foundation for many years, as Chair for a while and, since 2016, as Managing Agent. I was recently appointed as a Board Member of NISO.

Why have you chosen a World Cafe style approach for the NISO Plus Forum?
World Cafe is a simple but really effective way of engaging a large group in discussion. It’s also very flexible which is great for a first-time event like this. It’s also lots of fun!

What should participants expect on the day?
Lots of conversations about metadata. By the end of the day participants should have had the opportunity to speak with everyone else. Workshops can too often feel like a lot of listening and not much engagement. World Cafe switches that around by making engaged conversations the main focus.

What do you see as the main benefits for participants?
The opportunity to discuss metadata with like-minded, knowledgeable colleagues in a fun way. Being able to contribute to the important work that NISO does and help to shape the NISO Plus Forum. Meeting lots of new people.

And what about the benefits for NISO?
No well-run organization like NISO can exist without engaging its members and letting them help to drive the agenda.  Co-creation like this benefits all stakeholders.

How will we know if the day has been a success?
Everyone is tired by the end of the day, but nonetheless they hang around to chat some more.

Thanks so much, Jonathan!

If your interest is piqued, and you’d like to join us, please be sure to register as soon as possible  as places are strictly limited to a maximum of 100. Thanks to the support of AGU and our other sponsors, we have been able to keep the cost of registration to $199 for members and $249 for non-members. We also encourage you to support the SSP Generations Fund, by purchasing a ticket for a fundraising event taking place on AGU’s rooftop terrace on the evening of September 20. Please see the registration page for details.

We very much hope that you’ll be able to join us for this exciting new event. It will be NISO’s first in-person event since the start of the pandemic, and we want it to be safe and welcoming for everyone, so please see the bottom of the NISO Plus Forum page for our Covid policy, including cancellations.