Embedding DEIA in NISO Activities
Following its launch in early 2021, the NISO Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Committee focused primarily on engaging with our community to help us prioritize our work. Based on the responses to a community survey, we held three very successful webinars on metadata to support DEIA — an overview of the topic, and deep dives into metadata to support accessibility and Indigenous knowledge. All are openly available and we encourage you to view and share them widely.
This year, we have started to focus more on embedding DEIA in specific areas of NISO’s work, which has led to the creation of two subcommittees: on education and events, and on standards. DEIA Committee subcommittees are ad hoc committees established by the DEIA Committee Co-Chairs — currently Karim Boughida (University Rhode Island Libraries) and Salwa Ismail (UC Berkeley Library). They are intended to support the NISO DEIA Committee’s strategic goal to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in all areas of NISO’s work.
The Education and Events Subcommittee is chaired by Wayne Strickland (NISO Treasurer) of the US National Technical Information Service; see the subcommittee web page for a full list of members. They are charged with developing and maintaining a community of practice around events and educational outreach for the NISO DEIA Committee and its work, including providing input and feedback for Education Committee events, as well as identifying opportunities for DEIA-focused events.
The Standards Subcommittee is chaired by Camille Callison (member of the Tahltan Nation) of the University of the Fraser Valley, Canada; a full list of members can be found on the subcommittee web page. It is responsible for establishing and helping to embed DEIA principles in NISO’s culture and, in particular, our standards work, specifically:
- Advising NISO on existing and potential work items related to information standards and DEIA principles
- Identifying new standards and recommended practices needed to support DEIA in the information community
- Fostering DEIA in NISO working groups and committees
- Recommending groups and individuals to work with on DEIA related standards
We’ll provide further updates on the work of these two important subcommittees and would like to take this opportunity to thank all the participants for their contributions.