This report synthesises six years (2015-2020) of OCLC Research Library Partners Metadata Managers Focus Group discussions and what they may foretell for the “next generation of metadata.” The firm belief that metadata underlies all discovery regardless of format, now and in the future, permeates all Focus Group discussions.

This report provides an overview of the context in which the Wikibase prototype was developed, how the platform was adapted for use by librarians, and eight use cases where pilot participants (co-authors of this report) describe their experience of creating metadata for resources in various formats and languages using the Wikibase editing interface.