Data Storytelling Toolkit for Libraries (DSTL): Distilling Library Wisdom

Monday, January 13, 2025

12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Online (Zoom)

What can you tell about your library data as a story? Learn how to bring data stories to life for library advocacy of all types, from sustaining the library to transforming its work. Participants will learn about ongoing research identifying classic library stories told to persuade decision-makers as part of the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Libraries project (IMLS). Tools academic libraries can use include:

Strategies to understand data storytelling uses for academic libraries
Reach different kinds of audiences such as students, administrators, and funders
Adapt narrative structures to communicate information and emotion at the same time

Join storytelling expert Kate McDowell for a lively interactive session to make data work as evidence for your compelling library data stories.

About the Speaker

Dr. Kate McDowell focuses on storytelling as information research, social justice storytelling, and how the history of library storytelling can enhance contemporary data storytelling. Her writing appears in Library Quarterly, College and Research Libraries, and JASIST, where her article Storytelling wisdom: Story, information, and DIKW theorizes storytelling as a fundamental information form.

She advises regional, national, and international nonprofits, including work with the World Health Organization on storytelling responses to online health misinformation. McDowell leads the nationally-funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians, to equip public libraries with the narrative tools they need to thrive in the data-driven era. McDowell is an associate professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Her teaching on both storytelling and data storytelling was internationally celebrated with the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2022.

Data Storytelling Toolkit for Libraries (DSTL): Distilling Library Wisdom