The Design for Diversity Learning Toolkit is a prototype exploring the resources and strategies needed to help cultural heritage practitioners advocate for and create more inclusive information systems. It is a collection of learning resources, gathered between 2016 and 2018, that can be used in a classroom, workplace, or volunteer organization.
Developed during an IMLS National Forums grant from 2016-2019, the Toolkit and the final grant report provide samples of the different kinds of information, actions, and next steps that can help achieve more equitable information systems in libraries, museums, and archives.
This Toolkit is written from the stance that technology is not neutral, but instead either reinforces or challenges existing inequities. The initial grant-funded phase used a participatory process to explore methods for creating more inclusive information systems in the cultural heritage fields. A core challenge for the grant team, acknowledging our starting point as a group of four white women at a private university, was to build an advisory board, core design group, and other collaborative structures that could ensure a broad set of perspectives and positions were brought to the work of this forum.
