Data visualisation

ELAG 2014
Data visualization as a library service? Examples from Chalmers library
Stina Johansson, Librarian/bibliometrician at Chalmers Library, Sweden

(see description of the talk)

Father of Data? William Playfair (1759-1823), Scottish engineer and political economist. Developed first data charts. "The king at once undrestood the charts and was hihgly pleased. He said they spoke all languages..."

Graphics can make data much more "readable". A lot of communication is done through images. Chalmers Library uses a lot of visualisation to communicate about its data. E.g. topical analysis through keywords or citations networks or geospatial visualisations. E.g. Author co-citation analysis: a map representing the most cited authors, with links between them meaning various things, size or centrality of "dots" providing visual information.

Some of the visualisations are interactive - clicking brings to additional or linked info. Also visualisations of country level collaboration with environmental department data, for example.

See: http://chalmeriana.lib.chalmers.se/visuals/journal_citation/

Tools
Gephi: open source visualisation tool
Raw: open web app to create vector-based visualisations (from spreadsheets, potentially?) used on top of D.js.library (java) through a simple interface
VOSviewer: can use with a raw text file, easy to use

Data has to be clean and structured though! Be creative and play!