The Teaching and Learning Toolkit will feature a set of short, intensive case studies that provide evidence of a wide range of practical experimentation and design work. We see these examples as an important way for practitioners to share concrete experiences of their work on the issues surrounding diversity in system design, library and information science, archival work, digital cultural heritage, and related areas. Within the Toolkit, these case studies can be used as readings, as the basis for a variety of assignments, and as an important attestation of practice that may not be fully represented in the research literature. The case studies will also be a valuable input for our discussions in the two Design for Diversity public forums, and some may be featured in those events.

The case studies will be comparatively short (about 750-2500 words) narratives that describe a specific project, organization, work process, or similar undertaking. Studies might focus on any aspect of the “design for diversity” problem space: a more inclusive search interface, an experimental approach to user-generated keywords, an outreach effort, a curricular experiment, a new way of structuring a database, an attempt to teach children about metadata. The goal is to provide information about the project that can enable a reader to understand the problem being addressed, the specific actions, methods, and outcomes, and what was learned (whether through success or failure). Taken as a group, the case studies will compile varied, concrete examples of inclusive practices, demonstrating the concrete ways in which practitioners are supporting the diverse needs of communities and what they learned from their triumphs and failures, and finally, provide a platform for underrepresented practitioners to be heard and contribute their work to the larger conversations.

If you’re interested in contributing a case study, please fill out this Case Study submission form and provide a 3-5 sentence brief summary of the case study you would be interested in sharing. The Design for Diversity team will contact all respondents within 1-2 weeks of the initial proposal date with more information about next steps. All case studies will be published on the Design for Diversity site, and selected case studies will be published as part of the final teaching and learning toolkit. Please subscribe to our email list to receive updates.

Foundational Readings

We will be actively developing this list over Summer 2017. To suggest new resources for this list, please add to the reading list Crowdsourced Bibliography under “Suggested Readings.” Under “Topics for Further Exploration,” please include particular topics or fields that you hope are further developed in this bibliography. Otherwise, feel free to explore the readings and annotations already generated.

If you are interested in joining our Zotero library, please contact us to request access.