Data Visualization: A Guide to Visual Storytelling for Libraries

(Hardback)

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Description

Data Visualization: A Guide to Visual Storytelling for Libraries is a practical guide to the skills and tools needed to create beautiful and meaningful visual stories through data visualization. Learn how to sift through complex datasets to better understand a variety of metrics, such as trends in user behavior and electronic resource usage, return on investment (ROI) and impact metrics, and data about library collections and repositories.

Sections include:
Identifying and interpreting datasets for visualization
Tools and technologies for creating meaningful visualizations
Case studies in data visualization and dashboards

Data Visualization also features a 20-page color insert showcasing a wide variety of visualizations generated using an array of data visualization technologies and programming languages that can serve as inspiration for creating your own visualizations.

Understanding and communicating trends from your organizations data is essential. Whether you are looking to make more informed decisions by visualizing organizational data, or to tell the story of your librarys impact on your community, this book will give you the tools to make it happen.

Reviews

The edited work Data Visualization: A Guide to Visual Storytelling for Libraries brings together 11 chapters that explore the foundations of data visualization and storytelling, techniques for data visualization of library data, and approaches to the integration of data and visualization expertise into information literacy. As with other Library Information Technology Association (LITA) guides, this work is well suited for librarians seeking to better understand how data visualization techniques and tools might be used to address common library needs. The inclusion of theoretical, applied, and instructional content broadens the set of potential readers. Readers seeking a broad work to help them understand data visualization techniques would be well served by using this book with a comprehensive but focused work on a specific software platform and visualization approach. * Technical Services Quarterly *
Data Visualization tells the librarys data story, not through dry statistics and text, but through real-life case studies from libraries that describe how data visualizations clearly illustrate such library roles as research activity, teaching information literacy, and collection development. This LITA Guide also describes tools libraries use to create the visualizations and demonstrates how data visualizations can convey library data in a quick, comprehensive, visually stimulating, entertaining way that emphasizes the importance and relevance of the library and its services to todays populace. -- Beverley E. Crane, Former Trainer & Instructional Desginer, DIALOG; and author of Infographics: A Practical Guide for Librarians
Data visualization can transform dry and complex data into fascinating insights and help librarians discover new patterns and trends easily missed otherwise. For this reason, data visualization is a highly relevant topic to libraries. Data Visualization: A Guide to Visual Storytelling for Libraries offers readers a practical overview of what it takes to visualize library data from data cleanup and preparation to design principles and specific tools and techniques through a number of interesting case studies, which illustrate how libraries can utilize data visualization for real-world benefits. -- Bohyun Kim, author of "Understanding Gamification and The Library Mobile Experience: Practices and User Expectations"

Author Bio

Lauren Magnuson is systems and emerging technologies librarian at California State University, Northridge and development coordinator for the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI). Her interests include PHP, Python, analytics, and data visualization, as well as promoting open source technology in academic libraries. She has an MA in information science and an MEd in educational technology from the University of Missouri and a BA in philosophy from Tulane.