This Library Carpentry lesson introduces librarians to working with visualization in Google Spreadsheets, RAWGraphs and Plot.ly. This is an alpha Library Carpentry course, with possibilities for extension and refinement.
At the conclusion of the lesson you will understand:
On the one hand, we learn to work with certain tools, on the other hand, we gather “tool-agnostic” visualization skills.
Prerequisites
For this lesson you will need
- a Google account to use with Google Sheets
- two datasets that can be downloaded here.
The first dataset pertaining new physical library items (new_physical_items.xslx) has been extracted from Alma Analytics. After extraction, the publication dates, the publication places and publisher names have been cleaned using OpenRefine’s ‘text facet’ and ‘fingerprinting’ features. The second dataset (popular_searches) includes common user queries, aggregated per month, and has been extracted from Primo Analytics.
| Setup | Download files required for the lesson | |
| 00:00 | 1. Introduction |
What is visualization?
What are common fallacies in terms of visualization? |
| 00:30 | 2. Pivot tables and basic visualizations |
What are pivot tables?
How do we use them to summarize data? How do we create basic visualizations from the summaries in pivot tables? What are design guidelines for basic visualizations such as column charts, bar charts and pie charts? |
| 01:20 | 3. Data types and temporal visualization |
What types of variables exist, and how could we potentially visualize them?
How do we convert between data types? How do we visualize temporal phenomena? |
| 02:00 | 4. Topical exploration and visualization in RAWGraphs |
How can we explore the topics contained in the new items dataset?
How can we visualize data in more advanced ways then in Google Spreadsheets? |
| 02:40 | 5. Exploring publication places (spatial data) | How do we create simple geomaps depicting new items in our collection? |
| 03:10 | 6. Alluvial diagrams and scatterplots |
How do we create simple geomaps depicting new items in our collection?
What ‘different’ ways of visualizing it exist, and how useful are they? |
| 03:40 | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.