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Dana Health Sciences Library:
Hours Tuesday, January 21, 2025 |
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Dana Health Sciences Library | 7:30am – 11:00pm |
Dana After Hours Study | 11:00pm – 7:30am |
Howe Library:
Hours Tuesday, January 21, 2025 |
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Howe Library | 8:00am – 12:00am |
Reference Desk | 10:00am – 4:00pm |
Media Services | 8:00am – 7:00pm |
Maps | M-Th by appointment, email govdocs@uvm.edu |
Silver Special Collections Library:
Hours Tuesday, January 21, 2025 |
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Silver Special Collections Library | 10:00am – 6:00pm |
Billings North Lounge Study | 9:00am – 6:00pm |
Kristin Florian
For quick questions you can email me.
To schedule a 45 minute consultation at Dana library or online: Schedule appointment.
Consulting services are available to help you visualize and present your data and information. This will be most helpful toward the end of your project when your data is complete or mostly complete.
What to bring to a consultation:
-Your dataset and ideas
-The key points you want to communicate
-Who the audience is
-Any requirements for the project
What we'll talk about:
-The best charts, graphs, figures, or infographics to show your data or information. These can be added to papers, posters, presentations, and other projects.
-How to create the visuals. I can help with choosing and supporting software based on what you are comfortable with and what would be best for the project.
Here are a few popular data visualization tools and information about them. There are hundreds to choose from. These were picked because they are free or available through UVM.
Data visualization
Data wrapper
Data wrapper is easy to use and suggests graph types when you add data. The graphics look great and the free version allows some basic customization.
Excel
Excel is familiar to many people. It is a spreadsheet program you can create graphs and charts with. To make graphs unique you can customize and refine them. Here are available chart types and how to select data to make a chart.
Tableau
Tableau lets you import and combine data sources. It is used mostly for business data. You can build visualizations with a drag and drop interface. Students and Instructors can use the full version of Tableau for free for a year with renewals. Tableau Public allows you to create graphs for free if user/data privacy is not a concern.
You can get started with Tableau starter kits or preparing your data for Tableau.
R
R is a statistical analysis tool that can also be used to make complex and customizable data visualizations. You can download R and RStudio. The primary graphic making package is ggplot2 from the Tidyverse.
Learning R:
R-Ladies Sydney - This video series is for complete beginners to R. It explains and helps you set up RStudio and then you go through an analysis step by step with a dataset.
Swirl - A package that teaches R programming interactively and at your own pace in the R console.
R graph gallery and Plotly for R - Collections of charts with reproducible code provided.
R for Data Science (2e) is a popular book to learn how to transform and visualize data.
Training videos
LinkedIn (formerly Lynda.com) is a good source for training videos. There are five to ten minute videos about a specific skill, or one to five hour trainings by data visualization program. When you click the sign in button it will prompt you to put in your UVM email, username, and password.
Posters, presentations, and infographics
The poster guide from the Dana library website has design tips and poster templates.
PowerPoint
PowerPoint is presentation software created by Microsoft. It includes shape tools that can be used to develop infographics and diagrams when applied creatively.
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard for creating illustrations and is often used for graphic design, including infographics. It has a learning curve but is very versatile once you know how to use it. You can use it at the Howe Library computer.
Canva
Canva is an easy to use and free web-based program. You can create posters and infographics. There are templates to choose from and some customization.
Network graphs
VOSviewer
VOSviewer is used for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. VOSviewer Getting started has a video and instructions.
Research Rabbit
ResearchRabbit is a citation-based literature mapping tool.
Bibliometrics
iCite
iCite provides a panel of bibliometric information for scientific publications within a defined analysis group. Here is an overview.
Inspiration
Information is Beautiful is a collection of constantly updated infographics and data visuals searchable by subject.
Designing with data helps with choosing a chart based on data types and relationships.
Data viz project has a large selection of graph types with explanations and examples.