{"id":13967,"date":"2021-05-24T07:25:04","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T12:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/gmr\/?p=13967"},"modified":"2021-05-24T07:25:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T12:25:04","slug":"a-data-visualization-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/2021\/05\/a-data-visualization-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"A Data Visualization Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In November 2019, I was awarded a scholarship by NNLM-PNR (Pacific Northwest: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington) to attend a data visualization workshop titled &#8220;Accessing, Analyzing, and Visualizing IPUMS Data&#8221; in Denver, CO. The workshop, hosted by <a href=\"https:\/\/policyviz.com\/\">PolicyViz<\/a>, was facilitated by Jonathan Schwabish, Urban Institute; David Van Riper, IPUMS; and Jose Pacas, IPUMS. I was eager to attend as I was on a journey to learn two new skill sets: data visualization and <em>teaching<\/em> data visualization to others \u2013 and the experience did not disappoint. First, the venue chosen was very cool \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/generalassemb.ly\/about\">General Assembly<\/a> reminded me of something out of the Grizzle Campus from Parks &amp; Recreation \u2013 complete with glassed-in classrooms, concrete floors, and a caf\u00e9 that sells sparkling waters you\u2019ve never heard of before. Our workshop had only six attendees, which really personalized the experience. My co-students ranged from educators to business analysts \u2013 and we had a good laugh during introductions when we realized that two instructors and myself were all from the University of Minnesota (I flew all the way to Denver to learn from folks on my own campus \u2013 and it was totally worth it!).<\/p>\n<p>There were quite a few significant takeaways.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Sketching. <\/strong>One of the first exercises we did was to use post-it notes to sketch as many different ways to visualize a particular scenario as we could imagine. This simple exercise stretched my creative limits and reinforced the importance of experimentation and imperfection in data visualization. I had attended one other workshop that required a similar exercise, and I found these experiences so valuable that I decided to add them to the data visualization workshop that I would teach at my institution.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Data sources.<\/strong> Unexpectedly, I also learned a lot about publicly available health data which I was previously unaware. <a href=\"https:\/\/ipums.org\/\">IPUMS<\/a> data is produced and managed by my own institution \u2013 which is especially convenient for me! When imagining what type of data visualization workshop I would teach, I had not considered data sources, but the real-world health data featured in this workshop was an excellent use-case. It helped me to recognize the practicality of a workshop utilizing publicly available data.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tools.<\/strong> I left the workshop with a number of tools, including a practice toolkit (digital files), a data visualization chart guide, and Jonathan\u2019s textbook \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/policyviz.com\/pv_books\/better-presentations-a-guide-for-scholars-researchers-and-wonks\/\">Better Presentations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks<\/a>.\u201d The book and chart guide, in particular, have been invaluable in developing my own data visualization workshop.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Teaching model.<\/strong> The full-day workshop flew by; in part, due to the smartly organized teaching model. There were fun exercises where we pushed our creative boundaries, lecture that incorporated attendee feedback, follow-along data analysis, and interesting and accessible (in terms of being easy to understand for newcomers) data visualization techniques explained. I knew that I could not follow this exact model when I teach my own one-hour workshop, but I did incorporate three of these techniques: creative sketching, audience feedback throughout, and accessible visualization examples.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What ever came of this experience? A professional development leave, two data visualization workshops, and a guide for other libraries looking to expand their data visualization services. &#8220;Accessing, Analyzing, and Visualizing IPUMS Data&#8221; was one of many courses, workshops, and presentations I attended in preparation, but it was significant in it\u2019s contributions. In July 2020, I was awarded a six-week professional development leave to create two data visualization workshops. I relied heavily on Jonathan\u2019s book for my workshop titled \u201cData Visualizations: Design Principles &amp; Targeted Messaging to Effectively Communicate Your Research\u201d and used the real-world data concept for my workshop titled \u201cIntroduction to Tableau.\u201d I teach each of these workshops once per semester to an interdisciplinary and interprofessional audience, and both are well attended. Both of them are also constantly evolving based on feedback and new learning experiences. I look forward to teaching them in-person some day! A final output was the <a href=\"https:\/\/libguides.umn.edu\/datavisservicestoolkit\">Data Visualization Services Toolkit for Libraries<\/a> \u2013 a guide for any librarians or libraries seeking to develop or grow data visualizations skills and services.<\/p>\n<p>Shanda Hunt, MPH<br \/>\nPublic health librarian &amp; data curation specialist<br \/>\nHealth Sciences Library, University of Minnesota<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In November 2019, I was awarded a scholarship by NNLM-PNR (Pacific Northwest: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington) to attend a data visualization workshop titled &#8220;Accessing, Analyzing, and Visualizing IPUMS Data&#8221; in Denver, CO. The workshop, hosted by PolicyViz, was facilitated by Jonathan Schwabish, Urban Institute; David Van Riper, IPUMS; and Jose Pacas, IPUMS. I was&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/2021\/05\/a-data-visualization-journey\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8NC9K-3Dh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13969,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13967\/revisions\/13969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}