But Then You Have to Make It Happen

Librarianship as a profession has a strong commitment to diversity and tends to attract professionals ethically inclined to champion inclusion. The authors, both from historically underrepresented populations in library information technology, have a half-century of combined experience in the field and have held positions ranging from technician, systems librarian, instructional technologist, head of circulation, and digital scholarship and services librarian to associate dean in an academic library. The authors share their experiences and discuss how diversity and inclusion must be embraced at the individual level in order to develop a culture of diversity within an organization and to attract and retain diverse technology teams. Internal commitments to supporting a diverse environment are ultimately critical to recognizing, assessing, and fulfilling the needs of patrons. The authors identify and detail individual and grassroots efforts that have led to library technology programming for underserved populations, including programs involving outreach to diverse student and prospective student communities over the course of their careers. They reflect on strategies to create and retain a diverse technology group within the library and to advance and support diversity within the day-to-day work environment. They posit that a mix of experiences is necessary to advocate for access to underrepresented patron populations and to negotiate and implement a truly diverse environment with regard to ethnicity, gender, age, and socioeconomic background