I am very excited to welcome Linda Hofschire here today to bring her expertise and great ideas around this digital, data visualization. She comes to us from the library research service at the Colorado state library, and Linda, we're so glad you are here, and welcome. >> Thank you very much, Jennifer and Kendra, and how exciting it is to participate in a Webjunction Webinar, and I want to thank everybody for joining me this afternoon. I am wondering if any of you are in a location where it's snowing. I am in Denver, Colorado, and overnight, we got a surprisingly heavy snow storm, and many people woke up to the exciting news today of no school. So, I was thinking back about what an exhilarating feeling that can be. Oh, I see that a few of you at least are not in snowy areas. And I am enjoying looking so far at some of the comments that have been happening in chat prior to when we get started. And I will just toss out these questions again, that I had introduced earlier. Kind of asking what's the point of data visualization? Why use it. How does it add value? To our presentation of data? So, I encourage you to keep thinking about that question. If you have reflections, feel free to share them in chat, and I am going to touch a bit more on your comments later on. Oh, sounds like quite a range of weather, but I have to admit I am a little envious of you folks that are in warmer areas today. So thanks. So, I want to start talking about this topic by sharing with you how my organization got into data visualization, and infographic design, and so as Jennifer mentioned, I work at the library research service, which is part of the Colorado state library, and one of the things that my unit is best known for is this body of research that we have done over, really, the past two decades plus. Looking at the impact of school libraries on academic achievement. So, we have done a bunch of studies, kind of all demonstrating in different ways, how different aspects of school libraries can improve students' reading scores. And so, we had produced a whole bunch of very thick, technical reports, kind of represented by this picture, that you see on the screen. They were full of a lot of nice jargon, statistical terms, and maybe a bit inaccessible. And so, we started to hear more and more from our users, you know, a lot from school librarians who were trying to talk to their administrators, or from other school library stakeholders trying to advocate for school libraries that hey, we really think that you have got an important message in your research, but it's really hard to use these reports to communicate that message to these administrators or to other school library stakeholders. We're trying to catch their attention. They are not necessarily engaged in this topic already, and they are not going to plow through a quick, or this big, thick report. So, we really started thinking about those comments that we were getting, and how we might better serve our constituents in terms of how we presented the data from the studies that we were conducting. And so, what we ended up doing was designing this infographic, school libraries and student achievement, and this, essentially, sums up those two decades plus of research on one legal sized sheet of paper. This really hits the highlights. It's just identifying kind of ok, what is the main point of this huge body of studies? What does it demonstrate? What are those key school library characteristics associated with better test scores? And we were overwhelmed by the response that we got as a result of this piece. A lot of our constituents reached out to us, and said hey, this is what we were looking for, to start the conversation with our administrators or with other people who could, potentially, be very important stakeholders for school libraries. This is what finally caught their attention. This made a great introduction to this body of research, and once they got these people's interest, they could dig a bit deeper, and share more details. This really made us kind of rethink our strategies in general, and kind of how, from then on out, this was several years ago, we wanted to present our results from our studies to, to our users, and we have taken a much more visual approach since then. Thanks for sharing the link to that ingraphic. When we've been excited, like I said, we were overwhelmed by the response. This has been translated into French this hassle been use in Australia, this has been the essential piece people were looking for the conversation of the impact of libraries. So, I want to back up a minute and talk a bit about what's the point of infographics or data visualization, and as we started to get a little bit further into this, you know, into this field, some people raised concerns that it was like hey, this decorative? Are you dumbing down the numbers? But, I would argue that, actually, the opposite is true. A powerful infographic, a well designed infographic, can really help to connect with viewers, and create meaning much more quickly. And so I want to show you a couple of examples of kind of the good and the bad of infographics to demonstrate that point. So this first example that you see, you can see it says the internet is a zoo. And I saw this a few months ago, online, and I was attracted to it. I like animals. I have had -- I like the colors. But then, I started looking at it a bit more closely, and I was confused because what this is demonstrating is the ideal character counsels that you should have for different types of posts on various social media networks. So, I am looking at Twitter, it's saying that the ideal count in terms of getting the engagement is 71-100 care. Ok. But then, google plus is saying 60 characters, but, if you look at the animals associated with those different social media networks, isn't that a lot smaller than a giraffe? So I couldn't make sense of the visuals. Well, after spending a bit more time, trying to dissect this, I have finally figured it out. Each of those animals on the right side, the first letter of their name, matches the first letter of the social media network. So, the Flamingo and Facebook, the giraffe, Etc. So, I think that this is a great example of where infographics go wrong. This -- the design, actually gets in the way. It uses a gimmick, so you are trying to figure out what that gimmick is, and it's distracting you from, again, making meaning from making sense. Conversely, here's another infographic. This was put out by the centers for disease control. It's, also, very eye catching, I think. It has good design. Nice visual elements. But in this case the design elements help you to understand the numbers so you can look at this and very quickly see the average size of the foods in the 1950s versus now, and see those start differences in the sizes of the foods. So, in this case, the visualization, actually, enhances your understanding, gets you to more quickly comprehend those numbers, as opposed to getting in the way. And yes, good comments, that's a bit scary, isn't it, the size differences? And so, I think that this is why data visualization can be so powerful, and a lot of you were tapping into this, when you were answering the little questions that I had thrown out earlier. It can help us to more -- it can help viewers to more quickly comprehend those numbers. And it really, you know, it grabs their attention, pulls them in, and then you can easily access what is happening. Ok, so thinking about that, the point of visualization, I want you to take a moment and read these definitions that are on the screen, or these quotes about data visualization, and storytelling. And I really like these quotes because I think that they do -- they capture the essence of the power of turning numbers into a very, into a visual story, so that they do have a voice, and so that you can make a quick and impactful point to your audience. So, let's talk about kind of what we're talking about when we use the term, data visualization, and I think that it's really helpful to look at this concept as being on a continuum. So, on one side of the continuum, it might be something like a simple chart, that you have created in excel, or maybe some type of number art, meaning some type of numbers that you formatted, you know, in a special way, for a report or a presentation or things like that. On the other side of the continuum, it might be a very complex infographic that has been designed that includes a lot of different types of visual elements. And so, just to show a couple of examples on both sides of that continuum, this first example, obviously, is on the more complex end, and this is something that the California state library had created for its public libraries, a few years back, telling the story, and this is, actually, just a few pieces of it. It's a long infographic with multiple parts. And this was professionally designed. On the other hand, these are some snippets from one of New York public libraries' annual reports. This is on the simpler side of the continuum. But, you can see that by taking the time to format the numbers, so that they stand out more, and to do a few tweaks to that chart, it makes those numbers much more impactful than they would be just in text. And so getting back to that continuum, we're going to do a little activity, and Jennifer, maybe I will invite you to come back on a minute to explain how these annotation tools work. >> Wonderful, thank you, Linda. Yes, for those of you who have never been in one of our sessions where we used the annotation tools, you now have permission to use the check mark, and let me just walk you through the best way to find that mark, if you go to the top left corner of the screen, you will see this marker, click on that marker, and your panel of annotation tools will open. Go halfway down the tools to the box, and click on that little drop side down arrow, and collect, select the check mark, and that's the best way for you to mark on the next slide, so, feel free to practice here a bit. Again, some of you, if you are on a mobile device, or on a mac, those tools, the annotation tools may be towards the bottom of the screen, excellent, so, the smaller check mark is the one we're after, all right. So, now, we're going to ask you to hold your annotation tools, everyone needs to pause, and stop, so that we can move onto the next slide and have an accurate visual representation of your experience. Go, Linda. >> Thank you, Jennifer. >> Just a second here and let me make sure that I am taking away the tools. >> Sure. >> Thank you. >> Perfect. >> Ok. So, what I would like you to do is I am just curious to see where you are on the data visualization continuum. So, if you want to go ahead and mark your check mark, where you fit, and we'll just spend a minute doing that. How cool that we're using a visual element to visualize this. Ok. So, it looks like we have a broad range of the ones represented here or experience. That's exciting. And what I want to say today, and encourage you, yes, Heidi, I agree, it's a great infographic of all of the participants. What I want to encourage you today is that no matter where you are on this continuum, there are a lot of pretty simple tips and tweaks that you can employ at any time that you present numbers, that are really going to improve the accessibility and meaning of your data. So, thanks for participating in that. And just as a little aside, I want to show how we use this continuum in an event that we hosted to visualize where our participants were. What this was. You can see it's an evaluation continuum, this was for a three-day event, that my state library hosted last summer, and we asked our participants, when they first arrived, to rate themselves on three different items. Kind of showing where they stood, where their evaluation skills were, their confidence for their, with their evaluation efforts, and their library's commitment to evaluation. And you might see my feet down at the bottom. That gives you an idea of the scale of this infographic. It was a huge Banner. And so everyone placed their dot at the beginning of the three-day event. And then at the end of the three-day event, we gave them a Green dot, and said ok, where do you stand now? So, folks posted again, at the end of the three days where they were at. And this was a really fun exercise. People enjoyed doing it, as opposed to, you know, ok, here's another survey that we get to do. And it so quickly shows where our participants got to by the end of this event. So, just wanted to share this as kind of a fun interactive visualization example. Ok. I want to talk about four simple tweaks that you can use to make numbers and charts more accessible. To your audiences. The first tip, is to put numbers in context. And so to illustrate this point, I have included a few snippets from a publication that we have called quotable facts about Colorado libraries. And so, you can see, in the top left corner, we're throwing out kind of a big number. So, we're saying 123 million items circulated in Colorado in the past year. That can be impressive to some people, like just the big numbers, but for a lot of people, when throw out that large of a be in, it can be very abstract, and so we try to ground that by putting the number in context, so you can see that then we did a per capita where we're showing that that's more than 23 items for each person in Colorado. So, that, you know, that really grounds it. It says wow, that's a lot when you think about it. Similarly, in the example on the bottom left, again, instead of just throwing out some type of percentage, we're giving context, we're using a ratio, so in this case, it's that more than nine and ten Colorado public libraries help people find jobs. Then on the right side of the screen, this is kind of a different twist, on the idea of putting numbers into context, here we're doing that by comparing numbers to things in popular culture, so you can see the top example we're saying there are seven times as many libraries as Starbucks stores, for those of us in the metropolitan areas, Starbucks are ubiquitous, so to say that there is seven times as many libraries, that's really meaningful, powerful, and similarly, in the example below that, our Colorado state parks are quite popular, but actually, there is more than five times as many libraries as it is the state parks, so that's tip number one. Ground your numbers. Put them in context. Tip number two is to choose the appropriate chart. When you have got a bunch of numbers that you want to present, it's important to think about what type of chart, if you are going to be using a chart, represents them most accurately. So, in this example you can see that we have got three different kind of sets of data. A, b, and c. If you look at those pie charts, and try to compare them, they are kind of meaningless, it's very hard for the naked eye to see any meaningful difference between those three pie charts. Then if you look below, and see those data represented in a bar chart instead of a pie chart, the patterns emerge, a is increasing. B is going up and down. And c is decreasing. So, it's really important to choose the right chart, so that you can easily represent your data to viewers. Here's another little example, and you know, it's just fun to pick on pie charts, so I am going to beat them up a bit today, but in this example, you can see this is a poor choice of a chart because there is way too many categories, so it becomes very difficult when you start using shades of the same color, so you know, which blue is 1.0 versus word 95, and the other issue with this chart is that it's three dimensional. And that is, even though excel markets that as a feature, it's really not. Most typically, what we're representing in our charts, are not three dimensional concepts. And so that just confuses the viewer. It also, and we're going to see this in a bit, coming up, it can lead you to, actually, misinterpret the data. Tip No. 3, is that you really want to simplify what you are showing, and establish a clear focal point. This example, pretty much fails on that level, so you can see this chart, and someone commented, I never thought it was possible, but I understand soccer less after looking at this chart. Yes. This has so much going on. I think someone took a lot out of time to illustrate these different categories, and values, and it's hard to make sense of let alone draw any meaningful conclusion from. Tip No. 4, is don't make people work too hard to find information. And this is something that I see so often, when people use excel charts, and there is one little thing that is missing from this chart that would make it much easier for people to interpret, and what that is, is data labels. So, you can see now we have got the percentages above each bar. So, if we go back, to the first version of that chart, you don't have those labels, so people have to look across to the access to try to determine the values of each bar. People don't usually, honestly, make that much effort, so just give people the information that they need, so that they don't miss it. All right. Now, we're going to get into one of my favorite activities because I am a little strange. I enjoy doing a good chart dissection, so we are going to delve into the dissection, and then revision of a chart. So, here's our chart that we want to dissect. And so you can see it's showing some results of a summer reading survey. It's ok. But, I see a lot of places where this chart could be improved. I am just going to emphasize a few of them, as you can see, that I have highlighted in red. So my first issue with this chart is the title. This title is very descriptive. It's very long. It looks kind of academic, and like it should be in a journal article, and it does not really make a point. It's just describing what's in the chart. My next issue is those data labels. And what I don't like here is that we're going out to the decimal places. Unless you are working with very small numbers, decimal points, the places don't add any meaning to this, but simply, just clutter up your display. So we want to get rid of those. Also, those lines. Because we have the data labels, we don't need those lines to interpret the value of each of the bars, and again, they are just clutterring up the display, and reducing the amount of white space that is on -- in this chart. And then our legend. It's ok, but there is a little tweak that we can do to that to make it more quickly understandable. and then the last thing, that I would be, that I just have to point out, is the colors. Does this color scheme look familiar to anyone? and it should, yes. Thank you, Ashley, because it is the excel color, so first of all, no. We want to look like we tried. But second, and more, way more important, is that we can really use color to make a point. So, why not take advantage of that? So here's one way that this could be improved. So, starting at the top, you can see, instead of having that you know, chart 3, that's a super long descriptive title, now we're using that space to make a point. We're telling our users, what we want them to take away from looking at this chart. And that is that the impact of summer reading was particularly pronounced for families participating in the program for the first time, and for children between the ages of four and six. So, just tell people what you want them to know. You can also see, we got rid of those decimal places. We also got rid of those lines. And then if you look at the bottom, that legend. It's now going horizontal, instead of vertical, so you can just look across it, as you look across each of the bars. And then finally, our color. So now, we're taking advantage of color to emphasize our points. And those -- the results that we want to emphasize are for the two subgroups of the survey respondents, so those are that summer reading was especially, the impact was especially strong for those people participating for the first time, and for children ages 4-6, so we highlighted those in blue. Whereas the Gray bars, that's not what we want people to focus on so those recede. So, again, just kind of looking at the before and the after. All right, so, I would like to turn it over to you for a few minutes, and what we're going to do is look at three different charts and talk about how we can improve them. So here's our first example. So I want you to take a minute, look at the chart, and go ahead and share in chat what would you do to improve this chart. Yeah, this is great, the answers are coming fast and furious. So, a few people have pointed out, these values come to more than 100%. Yes, that should not happen in a pie chart, a pie chart is meant to represent a whole. And so this is one of those things that, you know, excel screams at you, so often, I don't know why it lets you do this, but yes. These -- this pie chart is confusing because. Fact it comes to more than 100%, a few people have picked up on the issue of jargon. That word, PACs in the title. That does not make this very accessible to anyone other than libraries. And yes, people do not like the choice of the chart, as pies. That is -- the pie chart is not a good choice. For these. I am also seeing better labels, and yeah, that title, could be improved. It's a bit jargony, isn't it? So, let's look at a potential revision. That's a good point, and I think a few others have said that there is too many other categories, and you can absolutely reduce. I did not do that in this example but that might be a fantastic way to go. Now, we changed to the bars, and we are using our title to make the point, so again, use that space, not to describe what's in the chart, but to, actually, say what you want, your viewers to take away from it. We're using color to make the impact of the points, and no lines, no extra clutter. All right. Let's look at our next example. So again, take this in, go ahead and share in chat what you might do to make this better. I like that, terrible change at all, yes. That, when it gets down to it, is pretty much what's wrong with this chart. So, I am seeing, you know, several people have said, this is not the right chart type. Yes. That is a very important point. So, if you are using this type of chart, a line graph, that is, that is used to represent a trend over time. That's not what we're looking at here. Yes, we don't like the series one, once again, a nice excel default, that just jumps in there, if you don't have anything else. And all those lines, the decimal places, and again, our title is not really helping us. So, here's one way to improve this. And I have to admit I cheated a bit because I did change the time to showing us a trend. And so, this would be, you know, this then would become an appropriate chart choice, if we were looking at trends over time, and so again we just changed that title to make it, emphasize the point that we wanted folks to take away, we made our legend horizontal and got rid of the extra clutter. Ok. Here's our last example. So, again, take this one in. And then, get to work dissecting it. Yes, everybody, it's not good. So in looking at the various comments, that are -- and thanks, everybody, this is like so great to get so many, so much feedback. We don't like where that title is placed, yeah, it's not nice to make people turn their heads to try to read the title. Especially, if it's not even a good title. And we have got that 3-D issue here. If you can see, I mean, first, there are no data labels, so that alone makes this very difficult to interpret. But, then the three dimensionality adds to that difficulty, that it's very hard to look over then to the access and see what the values are. This is -- yeah, the three dimensionality does not work here, and I am seeing that several people have pointed out, and it's like you anticipated my next point, that this would be a place where you could use a pie chart. And so let's look at that -- at a revision. So, here's the first crack at the revision. So, again, we have changed the title to something, again, where we want to make a point, and I see a good question in the chat, about what's the point of doing a computer user's list by race? It may be that this audience -- that this library is trying to, trying to -- is trying to show their demographics, who they are reaching. That type of thing. Here's our first crack at it, we turn it into a pie chart because again, this can be a place where it may be appropriate. But, I want to give it one more tweak. So, what that is, again, why not use color to make a point. And if Boulder bay, this fictional public library, is perhaps, trying to make a point about what demographic groups they are reaching, they could do that by highlighting the one that they wanted to emphasize, in Colorado. And Julia, I see your comment about that you don't like the Gray blue chart. And I think that this is something to, and for those of you who do you know, a lot of data visualization already, I think that you might chime in with your own experiences about this. But, there is a lot within data visualization, that is somewhat subjective. I think that there is guiding principle you can use, but there is a lot of Gray areas, and this pie chart has a lot of Gray areas, and I see that, that yes, some of your comments, and someone that flashed by, this is the same, and that is the point that I am trying to make with this chart, is that if you were trying to emphasize that sub-group, that this might be a way that you would to that, but like I was saying again, a lot in data visualization can be very subjective. People have a lot of different opinions, and so, what I found in my experience, is that it's helpful, again, to really study those kind of guiding principals, foundational design principles, and incorporate those in your work, and then, you know, get feedback from a variety of folks to see what they think about, you know, how they are interpreting your designs. And if you have had those -- for those who have had those similar experiences, kind of, with trying to deal with the subjectiveness of your visualizations, and, perhaps, how it has been helpful to seek feedback, feel free to share those in the chat. >> Linda, I will just jump in for a second. Before someone, someone said, I thought we were going away from pie charts for visualization improvements, and I know you are going to move on to some other pieces now, but there were, there was one interesting comment, might the monochrome charts be difficult for people with colorblindness, and I know that you have some resources on that, so do you want to talk a bit about that? >> Both great questions. And I like that. I think you want to pick and choose, there are some types of data, usually with -- certainly first, where the data adds to 100. And then, where there are not many categories. They can be used effectively, but I think that you really do want to be, you want to be careful in your use of them. Regarding the color issue, that is like -- that is a big, a big topic, we could do multiple sessions on, and I am going to share a resource at the end, or towards the end of the presentation, and just to provide some guidance on that, so thank you for bringing that up. >> Excellent, and then there was just one other question, is there any reason why you would not place the data labels inside the pie? Is there -- >> Yeah, no. There is not. And that might work. That could work very well, too. One thing that's tricky, as you will see, it works better, like if you don't have really tiny pie pieces, so like that 4%, is probably going to be difficult, and there are ways around that, like you could put the labels in the pie pieces but not, not that one, but again, that's one of those -- that's one of those Gray areas. >> Excellent. >> Thanks. >> Yeah. >> Thank you for bringing up those important questions. >> All right. >> So, we have talked through some tips and tweaks. I want to share just three kind of foundational design guidelines. and you are thinking how you want to represent data. So, that acronym, keep it simple, KISS. So myself and the other people in my unit, there is several of us that design infographics. We do not have professional training, we are not graphic design editors, so, and I have a feeling that a lot of us are in that place, and also, a lot of us somewhere many, many other responsibilities on top of any data visualization works that we do. So something that is really a guiding principle is to keep things simple. These are a few examples. These are snippets from that public library annual report that I shared earlier. But, again, this is not requiring complex software, lots of time. It's making a few simple tweaks to these charts, as well as to the graphics, just to make them more visually impactful. This is another view of that, as part of that New York public library annual report, and in addition to kind of the text of the report, that had those little charts and graphics. It also had this bigger infographic, but you can see, that there is several kind of keep it simple principles here at work. One is color. They are using one color, plus some shades of Gray, and another is font. Very clean, they are not using tons of different fonts. They are sticking with one. Just using it, you know, kind of going back and forth between capital and then there is white space. So, you know, keep it simple. Keep it clean. Here's an example, Fresno is inspired by New York public libraries. Infographic that we just looked at, but they also put into place similar principles of sticking with, you know, kind of a two-color scheme, keeping white space and not using lots of different fonts. Guideline number two, is show rather than tell. And so, you know, we can tend to be so text-based but the point of visualization is, don't just write out the results, but to the extent that we can, actually you know, visually show our points, the more powerful it can be. The first one, this is a little snip from an infographic that we had created for a grant that we had, the Broadband technology opportunities program grant, to put public computer centers in libraries throughout Colorado. And so, we could simply have just stated the fact that these were in 88 different locations. But instead, we showed, chose to visually represent them on the map. At that makes it more powerful because you can see the reach. These were over much of the state. You don't get that if you only read that there were 88 locations. and then a couple of other simple illustrations that kind of get at the same point, to the extent that you can show visuals, instead of just simply stating them, so here, making the point, at the top, you know, one in five adults are not online. Showing those people, actually, that bottom graphic is about, actually, that's the percentage of libraries that have websites, in the United States. This was of, as of 2012. But, again, kind of highlighting and using the visuals to emphasize the point that when we drop down to the smallest libraries, just 83% have a website. Julie, great question about the platforms, and the software. and I am going to touch a bit on that, in just a minute. Let me just hit our last design guideline, which is thinking about colors and fonts. And we already talked about that a bit, in looking at that New York public library infographic. Yes, Megan, welcome from Canada. That's great. Ok. so again, assess I mentioned, we are not professional graphic designers so we looked at other organization' work as we were first starting out, and we still do that. That's a great, a great idea. And one place that we looked at was the center for an urban future, which is kind of a New York City think tank, and we liked their approach to infographics, and this is one example, in terms of the use of color, as well as their use of fonts here, and so first of all, color. A lot of us may not be confident in choosing a color scheme, choosing colors that are complimentary. There takes the guesswork out of it, it's choosing one primary color, blue, using a few shades of it, and then, you know, potentially using black or Gray, as kind of your other background color. So, that has, that is a principle that we often follow in our own design work. To take the guesswork out of what colors work well together, and also, because it does -- it does look professional. The other thing we liked was the use of fonts, keeping it very clean, and not using a bunch of different fonts, but, sticking with one, and again, just varying the, the use of caps versus this case. Susan, thanks for sharing that resource, about sites to find color schemes. I am going to share a few of those coming up, but that was not one that, one that I am highlighting, so thank you. Let's touch on what software that you can use to design infographics, if you think that you want to dabble in these. I am going to talk about three options, there are tons out there. But, I am going to highlight three. The first two here, are desktop apps. Power point and adobe illustrator. So, power point, that might seem like an odd suggestion, but I really like it for a few reasons, I'm showing you this. This is something that I designed using elements that were all native to power point. And I like power point, especially if you are just dabbling, because it's something most people use so you are familiar with it, it's free, and I say that with, you know, quotes, and you have a lot of flexibility in it. If you ever had the experience of trying to go into Microsoft word to paste in a JPEG and try to drag it around, it's very difficult. And power point is a much more flexible canvas than word, and it's easy to move elements around. And so I have shared both this template, which is the legal size, as well as a letter size version of this. In the resources, feel free to download those, play with them, and do what you want, but I really like power point if you are just dabbling, and you can export it in a variety of formats, and pdfs, and JPEGs and Etc., and I saw a quick question about publisher, and yes, so, there is two reasons that I am not talking about publisher. One, is I don't use it. Two, again, it's that thing that most people are already using power point says. So, it's an easy program to jump into. and thanks, everyone, for sharing resources. Or tools. Illustrator is the other desktop app that I just want to touch on. I see we have at least one illustrator user, and I am curious to know, who does use illustrator? This is the more high powered option. It gives you a ton of flexibility, it is really the gold standard for graphic designers. And you can do almost anything in it. And so the two examples that I am showing you, these are pieces that we have created, and at my organization, and we use illustrator for our design work or in design, sometimes, as well. What I will say about, in terms of the drawback, is that it -- the learning curve for illustrator is pretty steep. And if you are not using it regularly, it's easy to forget, and so it's like you have to keep relearning it every time you go back in. There is also an expense. It's a subscription-based cost. So, I would say that this would be a good option if you really want to be doing a lot of more complex infographics, and if you are going to be doing it regularly. the third option, I want to talk about, is an online app. A Piktochart. And if you are not familiar with this, this is a web-based tool. That's the great thing about Piktochart, is that it has tons of templates. That's something that you will have in power point. Or illustrator, for that matter. So, this is an example, this is just some snippets of an infographic that we created, simply by modifying a chart, or I mean, a template in Piktochart. You can see -- I will show you the different pieces of it. and here's one other example of something that we just took some graphics, that were available, and this is starting from scratch, versus the template, but just grabbing a few graphics, and creating some simple little snippet graphics that could be put, posted for, on social media or things like that. So, the Piktochart is a great option, if you again, want to dabble in this, and maybe don't want to start with a blank canvas. You want to have guidance and use a template, and it has -- you can use it for free. There is also a paid version. Very quickly, I wanted to share that I have included a number of resources at these slides, so you can access these on Webjunction site afterwards. But, I do want to mention that first resource, the infographic software select guide, that's something that we have created that goes into more detail, both about the tools that I just talked about, but also, a couple others, that you can really think about kind of the pros and cons, if you are interested in getting into this, and what might be the best solution for your organization. I have also shared some websites for tips and inspiration, software tutorials, if you do want to dabble in illustrator, and here's some free and low-cost sources of graphics and photographs. And here's some symbol font sources. So you know, like zap but there is a variety of different fonts that give you little graphics like these. Another source for type fonts, and then also, for selecting colors, and I think that I saw someone, recommend color lovers, a great site. and then, finally, in our resources, I have shared a link to some documentation about designing to be compliant with colorblindness. And then, also, kind of thinking back to our chart dissection activity. This paper helps you to determine what chart or graph is right for the data that you want to present. Yeah, and thank you for the folks that mentioned the noun projects. In the chat, that is a great resource. Ok. So, I have been trying to keep up with the questions as we go, but I know that I have not caught all of them. And so I will just throw it out now if people do have anything. That they would like to ask or maybe you are hungry for pie. This is a pie charted that I can completely 100% get behind. This one never gets old for me. >> No. >> And I am all for it. It kind of looks like pac plan, too. >> It does. >> It does. >> Yeah, I think that, you, actually, answered a lot of the questions, and somebody did ask about illustrator, about illustrator, or sorry, about versions of publisher, aren't newer versions of Microsoft office getting rid of publisher, and I don't know if you have heard, or seen that happen. >> I, unfortunately, do not know the answer to that question. But, if anyone does, please share it. That's, that's a good question. >> Ok. >> Any suggestions on a tool to incorporate information on maps? Since you showed us one that you did with maps. >> We kind of diyed that to be honest. Let me do some work on that, that's a great question. I don't know, but I am happy to do work on looking into that, and share it in the resources afterwards. I see a couple of people mention that they have publisher in the latest versions. >> Yes. >> It does well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, well, I know in your resources, you listed, or you, for your image and icon sources, you know, a lot of times it's finding a good creative commons image, or map, for your purposes, and then, I suppose, it's the tools that you can use to overlay it, but yeah, that's a goods one to think about. >> That's a great question. >> So then, there is a great question you know, sort of working backwards, from the visualization, is there specific data that people should be trying to collect? That's another great question that I am sure that your team thinks a lot about, and are there changes, I would say, both to the services and resources based on the data and it's visualizations or changes to the way in which data is collected because of the way that we can visualize it? >> So, I think that, you know, in thinking about the data, that, what data you should be using, so start by thinking about what you already have. So, for example, every public library, has the statistics that they report on their annual public library survey, in some states, that's called the annual report. And that's, you know, everything from collection to staffing, budget, Etc., and then, from there, are you doing any patron satisfaction survey? Are you doing any type of outcome surveys, do you administer a survey after your programs? So, think about all of the various sources of data that you already have, are you collecting stories? That then could be used to flush out the numbers that you are presenting? And that's a place to start. But, then, from there, I think it's important to think about ok, what stories do we want to tell about our library? And then, do we have the data for them? and if you don't, that kind of gives you an indication of where to go next. And Jennifer, I might use that as a segue to my last couple of slides, if that's ok. >> Perfect. >> Ok. So, if you are interested in the broader topic of data, and evaluation, I want to share with you we, at my state library, host the research institute for public libraries, or RIPL. Our first one was last July. This is national, and international. We have had, we had Canadians last time. And this is a boot camp deep dive, three days, into the data and evaluation process. I encourage you to check out our website, Jennifer posted the link in chat. Our 2016 institute will be held in the fall, as of September, early October. And registration opens in is a few short weeks, January 26. So, check that out, if you think that you want to delve more deeply into this topic. We are taking a portion of our RIPL curriculum, and doing that, as a full-day preconference, at PLA, this April in Denver. If you think that you are coming to PLA and want the opportunity to delve more deeply into data and evaluation, check out our PLA preconference. and we're excited to see folks in Denver, as well. So Jen firework I will turn it back over to you, but I want to thank you, everybody, for being so great in terms of participation. I got lots. Ideas, and I am totally excited to go through the chat, just to see more of the suggestions and resources that the folks shared. >> Excellent. And sorry about that, the first link that I posted, wasn't right, so there is a fresh ripple link there for you, but I will also update it on the event Page, and we'll add any of the other resources that you all brought to the conversation, and I will send you an email, once everything is up, and the archive is posted and note as you leave the room, you will be sent to a short survey. It's great feedback that we can provide both to Linda and to our team as we continue to develop Webinar programming for you. And we'll send you a certificate, within the week, for those of you that were here, and just a reminder, that this arcampfire and all our Webjunction archives are posted and available for you to watch with others, and others, too, and we see it as a benefit of tools for learning for you all in all of your great work, in libraries. Thank you very much, Linda, for bringing this to a Webjunction Webinar, and we look forward to hearing about all the great projects you have got going on, and about -- especially about RIPL, I know lots of excitement is buzzing around that, so thank you for all your great work, and thank you to all of you who attended here, and thank you to our captioner for today.