In Storytelling with Data: Let’s Practice!, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic presents a new guide to data communication, featuring over 100 hands-on exercises and 250 data visualisations to help build skills in impactful data communication grounded in effective storytelling. Intended for anyone committed to improving their ability to communicate data and complemented by a website that enables users to further hone their … Continued
Category: Data
The Magnificent Seven: Looking Back on a Year of Exploring the Web Archives Datasets
It has been just over a year since we kicked off a deep dive into the Library of Congress Web Archives on the Signal! Now at over 2 petabytes, the web archives are a complex aggregation of interrelated web objects that make up the internet as we know it (images, text, code, audio, video, etc.). […]
Open Data Metrics: Lighting the Fire
CDL has been working to promote responsible development and use of data metrics through the Make Data Count initiative and other community projects. Daniella Lowenberg…
In the Library’s Web Archives: Dig If You Will the Pictures
The Digital Content Management section has been working on a project to extract and make available sets of files from the Library’s significant Web Archives holdings. This is another step to explore the Web Archives and make them more widely accessible and usable. Our aim in creating these sets is to identify reusable, “real world” […]
Tale of the converted: how complex social problems have made me question the use of data in driving impact
In practice the way in which research impacts and influences policy and society is often thought to be a rational, ordered and linear process. Whilst this might represent a ‘common sense’ understanding of research impact, in this cross-post John Burgoyne reflects on how upending the primacy of data and embracing complexity can lead to a more nuanced and effective understanding […]
Coding for and as social science
An increasingly large share of human activity now takes place in online digital environments. However social researchers are predominantly trained to investigate and interpret a pre-digital world. In this post Mark Carrigan and Phil Brooker argue that social researchers need to increasingly engage with code and coding in order to understand contemporary society. As one step in this direction and […]
UC Data Network: Lessons Learned
Scholars at the University of California need effective solutions to preserve their research data. This is essential for complying with funder mandates, publication requirements, policies,…
What does Facebook’s #tenyearchallenge tell us about public awareness of data and algorithms?
Helen Kennedy reflects on the recent #tenyearchallenge trend. Looking at responses to the challenge, she considers what they tell us about the public understanding of data and the companies that utilise it. Drawing on qualitative and survey data on the levels of public awareness, she finds that what the public knows about data continues to be unclear. Facebook, Instagram and […]
What does Facebook’s #tenyearchallenge tell us about public awareness of data and algorithms?
Helen Kennedy reflects on the recent #tenyearchallenge trend. Looking at responses to the challenge, she considers what they tell us about the public understanding of data and the companies that utilise it. Drawing on qualitative and survey data on the levels of public awareness, she finds that what the public knows about data continues to be unclear. Facebook, Instagram and […]
Book Review: The Data Gaze: Capitalism, Power and Perception by David Beer
In The Data Gaze: Capitalism, Power and Perception, David Beer explores how we are being put under the extractive, analytic and predictive lens of a data gaze that seeks to define our world in increasingly granular detail. Critically probing into the data analytics industry and the imaginary that gives it legitimacy, Beer offers a thoroughly readable take on the structures that are constructing and […]