Storytelling is a vital strategy for communicating impact and justifying future investments. Powerful and effective stories allow us to create a roadmap that weaves together information and emotion. This webinar will provide an orientation to storytelling that centers cultural humility while leveraging storytelling dynamics, including how to practice and refine an impactful story with a live audience. Participants will learn the techniques of story construction based on three classic narrative structures, with roots in folklore and narratology, and explore examples of data stories told by and about libraries. This is an opportunity to build confidence in the ability to recognize and craft a meaningful and memorable story.

Learning outcomes:

• Understand narrative structures
• Gain confidence in taking risks to develop library data as a story
• Develop skills for practicing stories with audiences
• Recognize and increase “retellability” of stories

Presented by: Dr. Kate McDowell, Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois–Urbana Champaign

Dr. Kate McDowell focuses on social justice storytelling, data storytelling, and storytelling as information research. Her writing appears in Library Quarterly, College and Research Libraries, and JASIST. She leads the nationally-funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians project to equip libraries with narrative tools for data-informed advocacy. McDowell is an associate professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, where her teaching received the international ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2022. 

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Webinar Attachments

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• Learner Guide (doc) Use alone or with others to extend your learning.

Related Resources and Links

• Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians
• McDowell, K. (2024). Library Data Storytelling: Obstacles and Paths Forward. Public Library Quarterly, 43(2), 202–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2023.2241514
• McDowell, K.;  Hu, X.; and Turk, M. “Developing Library and Data Storytelling Toolkits: Scenarios and Personas.” Proceedings of the iConference 2024, forthcoming. https://www.ischools.org/proceedings
• McDowell, K. (2023). Making Sense of a Gap: Data Storytelling and Libraries. Public Libraries Magazine, 62(6), 28–35.
• For more on eliminating library fines, Ending Late Fees: A Case for Equity, PLA and WebJunction webinar on Eliminating Library Fines: Improving Community Access, Equity and Usage.
• Dear data : a friendship in 52 weeks of postcard, by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec (see also Dear data website)
• Counting : how we use numbers to decide what matters, by Deborah A. Stone
• See additional references and resource at end of session slides
• Additional resources shared in chat
• Ending Late Fees: A Case for Equity, Public Libraries Online
• WebJunction webinar, Eliminating Library Fines: Improving Community Access, Equity and Usage
• RIPL webinar series: 12 months to better library data
• Remember to check your state library for data, e.g., Massachusetts Library Statistics
• Data Feminism, by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein 
  
• Race after technology : abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code, by Ruha Benjamin
• Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller, by Breanna J. McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison