Gaining Competency: Learning to Teach Data Visualization

Abstract

Data services librarians are often faced with local needs in all 12 data information literacy competencies (Carlson et al. 2011) but may not have the requisite skills in each area to offer services. Gaining expertise in an unfamiliar competency, particularly one which has not historically been associated with the library like “data visualization and representation”, can be challenging. This paper identifies a scaffolding for librarians to gain foundational experience in data visualization and provides a case study on one library’s initial service offering in this area – a “Data Visualization 101” workshop.