Process



Research

To better understand the usage of census data in the context of libraries, we interviewed 5 librarians and 5 data literacy advocates from different domains. Our objective of the research was to understand how census data is presently used in their work and which data categories are most relevant to them.

Research Questions
  • What is data literacy?
  • If people come to you with queries, how do you help people find the right resources? or the right datasets to look at?
  • In the audiences’ aspect, what domain or context is of most interest to them when seeking information? Also, in your aspect as a librarian, which data would be the one that you use the most frequently? And for what kind of purpose?
  • Do you use census data in your work? If not, which one are you using?
  • How is the data useful/ where do you use it? / Is this data helpful in any way while organizing certain events or making proposals for grants?
  • What are the tools that you use to look for information? Are there any other tools used to search different data sets?
  • What are the most commonly encounted problems for those who want to explore data? And what would be the strategies that you will recommend people to use when they are trying to understand different data sets?


From the interviews that we had with librarians, four out of five librarians have claimed that that they often use census data for making book purchases amongst other things like using data for grant applications and proposals. They use census data as their basis to buy books in order to create equity and inclusion.

A list of findings
  • Ellen Goodman
     Director | Andrew Bayne Memorial Library
    “when we buy books, we sort of set targets. ... to try and create some equity and inclusion.”
  • Ryan Splenda
    Business and Economics Librarian | Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Libraries
    “It would be tremendously helpful to have some sort of metrics data on particular books that are published that may help with our collections. ”
  • Hannah C Gunderman
    Data, Gaming, and Popular Culture Librarian | CMU Libraries
    “We find the book while doing our wwn reseach on what collections we’d like to develop for our liasion areas. ”
  • Emma Slayton
    Data Curation, Visualization, and GIS Specialist Librarian | CMU Libraries
    “Looking at the level of diversity in your community, ... that might add some interest to in terms of leearning about what resources people might have access to...”




Concept

STEP 1
The process begins with retrieving US Decennial Census data across four categories - demographics, social, economics and ethnicity for different neighbourhoods where libraries are located. This data is then refined based on parameters relevant to diversity and then visualized as a dashboard that can be easily accessed by librarians and viewers to have a better understanding of the community and diversity within the region.


Step 1


STEP 2
The next step involves fetching data of the top best-selling books from the New York Times API. Here, information is received about the title and author of the book which is further fed into the Wikipedia API as queries to collect more details about the book.


Step 2

STEP 3
Once the data is collected across different categories for a book, it is re-organised and re-formatted to form parallels with the categories of the diversity matrix. This can help the participants to efficiently and objectively evaluate the diversity levels of a book.


Step 3


STEP 4
The next step involves user participation wherein they are given an interactive diversity matrix to evaluate the diversity level of a book. The matrix asks the users a series of questions across different categories to better evaluate the contents of the book. Alongside each category, users are provided with the data fetched via the APIs for the particular book and additionally hints to help understand the context of the question from a ‘diversity’ perspective. They can thus reference this information to objectively answer the questions. Once the matrix is completed, the users can see a summary of their responses along with the diversity evaluation of the book to help them make better decisions for their book collection/s.


Step 4


Description


Step 5



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