2020 Miles Conrad award lecture: James G. Neal

This paper is based upon the 2020 Miles Conrad Award Lecture that was given by James G. Neal at the inaugural NISO Plus conference held from February 23–25, 2020 in Baltimore, MD (USA). The lecture provided a brief look back at some of the key information industry challenges of the past four decades, but more importantly it highlighted the challenges facing the community today such as the democratization of creativity; the born-digital explosion; policy chaos including privacy, market monopoly, global intellectual property, and intellectual freedom; the challenges of diversity, equity, and inclusion; and human-machine symbiosis and blended reality. The lecture lists five commandments to which all stakeholders in the Information Community need to adhere in order to be successful moving forward together: (1) Thou shall preserve the cultural and scientific record; (2) Thou shall fight the information policy wars; (3) Thou shall be supportive of the needs of your users and your readers; (4)Thou shall cooperate in new and more rigorous ways; and (5) Thou shall work together to improve knowledge creation, evaluation, distribution, use, and preservation.