I’ve been out and about and busy juggling many things this month – library conferences, speaking engagements, and day-to-day work. All of it finds me neglecting my poor blog. Let’s see if I can’t remedy that a bit today. Continuing with the theme I began with my last post, here are some great finds that I’ve come across over the past weeks:
Rob Peterson of Dun and Bradstreet offered a nice blog post last month, highlighting 14 Data Visualization Tools to Tell Better Stories with Numbers. It provides a concise overview of which type of visualization is best for the job, along with links to online tools for each. Remember, if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Keep more than one tool in your toolbox.
I’ve printed off the instructions for How to Make a Timeline from a Google Spreadsheet. They’ve been sitting on my desk for weeks, but I know I’ll find the time(line) to give it a try. Timelines can be such a wonderful way to tell a story.
Print Friendly was recommended to me via some blog and/or list that I follow. I’ve discovered that I use it so very often since. It’s terrific for printing out webpages without all of the ads and photos and whatnot. If you must print, it offers a greener way of doing so.
Thanks to the great folks at both UMass Amherst and UConn, plus the Boston Library Consortium, I was finally able to attend a hands-on workshop on Tableau. I tried unsuccessfully to teach myself how to use it for awhile. (This is due more to my lack of time and focus than on any of Tableau’s tutorials and help guides.) I knew that I’d like it, if I got around to using it. And yesterday, I published my first test visualizations. Woot!!
The American Society of Cell Biology recently shared an article about NIH’s new tool to calculate Relative Citation Ratio. iCite allows users to compare citations, offering an alternative (read, better) to the standard journal impact factor. It’s nice to see NIH supporting the idea that the measure(s) of research impact are broader than we’ve long accepted.
I’m a big fan of Shaun Usher and his projects, “Lists of Note,” “Letters of Note,” and “LetterHeady.” While perusing his site recently, I came across the collection of videos called, “Letters Live.” The art of letter writing is sadly fading, but its beauty thankfully revisited through this wonderful collection of actors reading the correspondence of the famous and infamous. Enjoy!
One of the library conferences that I attended this month was the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries (NAHSL). I was on the planning committee for the conference and one thing that I decided, on a whim, to do was create NAHSL BINGO, a game that attendees could play throughout the meeting. It was filled with typical sightings and/or sayings one sees/hears during these events (knitters? cell phones going off? someone complaining about the room’s temperature?). To create the cards, I Googled “bingo card generator” and found a great one here. Bookmark it for fun and games emergencies.
At that same meeting, perhaps one of the biggest audience gasps came when the librarians from Yale University’s medical library unveiled their brand spanking new tool to help the poor soul tackling systematic reviews … the Yale MeSH Analyzer. Geeky librarian souls, rejoice in its awesomeness.
Lastly, this week’s What’s On My Desk Right Now? Nathan Yau’s, Data Points; Charles Wheelan’s, Naked Statistics; Albert Cairo’s, The Functional Art; Dona Wong’s, The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics; and the hot-off-the-press The Very Best American Infographics of 2015, edited by Gareth Cook. Oh, and a drawing of a bunny that I doodled while on a lengthy conference call a few weeks back. Sense a theme?
Until next time… doodle on!
A Librarian by Any Other Name 