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Data visualization is the graphical representation of data, which researchers use to identify patterns, trends, outliers, etc., and for creating visual evidence to support a scholarly claim. The range of visualization chart types vary considerably, e.g., scatterplot, bar chart, and line graph. The kind you will see in the examples here are timeline, maptree, and network. GIS, a form of data visualization that uses geospatial data, will be discussed in the mapping section. (To learn more about data and data visualization, see Introduction to Data.)
Network visualization illustrates connections and relationships between different entities. As to be expected, the intricacy of the networks will impact the complexity of the visualization.
This relatively simple network visualization illustrates the relationships between characters in the film, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Visit to interact with this visualization.
"Six Degrees of Francis Bacon," a more complex network visualization of early modern social networks, is a collaborative project to which multiple scholars and students from around the world have contributed.
Visit to interact with this visualization.
This treemap visualization, which shows exports around the world, is from the Harvard Growth Lab's The Atlas of Economic Complexity and was created using a platform designed by the Lab.
"Conflicts of the World," a more complex timeline than the one above, was created with , a popular tool used for creating multiple types of data visualization.
There are many basic visualization types. Which one you use depends upon the kind of data you are displaying, how you want people to engage with it, and the kind of story you are trying to tell.
Some of the most common types of data visualization chart and graph formats include:
Bar charts are one of the most common data visualizations. You can use them to quickly compare data across categories, highlight differences, show trends and outliers, and reveal historical highs and lows at a glance. Bar charts are especially effective when you have data that can be split into multiple categories.
The line chart, or line graph, connects several distinct data points, presenting them as one continuous evolution. Use line charts to view trends in data, usually over time (like stock price changes over five years or website page views for the month). The result is a simple, straightforward way to visualize changes in one value relative to another.
Pie charts are powerful for adding detail to other visualizations. Alone, a pie chart doesn’t give the viewer a way to quickly and accurately compare information. Since the viewer has to create context on their own, key points from your data are missed. Instead of making a pie chart the focus of your dashboard, try using them to drill down on other visualizations.
Scatter plots are an effective way to investigate the relationship between different variables, showing if one variable is a good predictor of another, or if they tend to change independently. A scatter plot presents lots of distinct data points on a single chart. The chart can then be enhanced with analytics like cluster analysis or trend lines.
In digital scholarship, maps are often one component of a larger project and, in some cases, function as an interface to other aspects of a project.
Witches, a University of Edinburgh digital project that visualizes the locations of witch trials from 1550-1750, links a map marked with witch trial locations to The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database.
Story mapping platforms are applications that use a variety of maps, text, and multimedia elements to present interactive narratives that engage users and provide instantly-accessible geographic context to any project.
This story map, created using Knightlab's StoryMaps, combines text, video, and images to highlight how Chicago's dialogue with classical antiquity has shaped the city's look, reputation, and identity.
Visit to interact with this story map.
This story map, which explores the current healthcare system and soaring cancer drug prices, was created using ArcGIS Online Story Maps. A more flexible and complex platform than Knighlab's version, it combines text, various media elements, and a variety of maps and data visualizations.
Visit to interact with this story map.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the combination of geospatial software (e.g., ArcGIS), tools (e.g., a GPS receiver), and geospatial data. While GIS is a form of data visualization, it also falls under the category of mapping. In the examples below, you can see how GIS can be used for visualizing all kinds of data including statistics and geographic areas. GIS is used for creating both static maps, such as the kind one sees in presentations and books, and interactive maps that can be shared online.
This presentation poster created for the 2019 BC Libraries GIS contest has maps created in ArcGIS (see more information about the project in BC's eScholarship).
This interactive map was created in Leaflet using curated spatial data of Gabii, an archaeological site outside of Rome.
Visit to interact with this map.
The map's interactive nature allows users to click on individual features to find out more about them as well as perform actions such as take measurements, search by feature number, and turn on and off different years of aerial imagery to see how the excavation evolved.
Mapping Islamophobia is an example of how GIS visualizes geospatial along with statistical data.
Visit to interact with this map.
The use of 3D and immersive technologies, including 3D scanning, alternate reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and immersive games, in academia has greatly increased over the past decade as scholars have explored how they can be best used in research and in the classroom. 3D technologies include the variety of ways that three-dimensional digital representations of real-world features can be created and shared. Immersive technologies take this experience a step further, using these digital representations to create a larger digital experience with its own narrative or argument that the user can experience firsthand.
Mapping is a broad term that describes adding marks, layers, images, etc. to maps. While GIS is part of mapping, not all mapping is GIS. Adding a pin to a Google Earth map, for example, is not GIS. Adding a data layer and using that data layer to perform an analysis is.
DS methods enable scholars and students to conduct research and present scholarship in a variety of modes, including spatial, temporal, textual, hypertextual, immersive, graphical, and exhibitive. DS tools, e.g., ArcGIS, and skills, e.g., coding, are the means by which methods are enacted.
Here you will find an overview of different methods from a conceptual standpoint. To learn more about enacting methods and using tools, visit BCDS Learn.
A hypertext is a digital text that links to sections or pages within the text, to other texts, to media elements, and the like. Websites are the most common hypertext example. EBooks and eJournals are also often hypertextual, though not always with the same level of intricacy as a website. When designing a hypertext there are a number of technical and intellectual considerations including, but not limited to, information architecture, information organization, taxonomies, wayfinding, and navigation. All of these considerations impact usability and user experience. In digital scholarship, hypertexts are ways of publishing scholarship, e.g., making data visualizations and analysis available online. Through their structure, design, and the inclusion of media, they are also used to present scholarly arguments and tell narratives.
Like physical exhibits, digital exhibits require research, curation, the writing of captions and other contextual information, information organization, and design. Beyond displaying and contextualizing digitized or born-digital materials like historical documents, photographs, film footage, or audio clips, digital exhibits allow for such things as linking to outside resources and the incorporation of a variety of digital objects like maps and timelines. Digital exhibits often come from existing digital collections or begin with the creation of a digital collection, which requires digitization and metadata generation among other steps.
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) offers increased user engagement with the subject matter in question than a traditional image. AR involves applying a simulated layer that allows users to experience a layered, computer-generated enhancement to their real-world perception. VR involves creating and/or experiencing a computer-simulated world. AR and VR technologies are continuously evolving with AR, in particular, becoming easier and more affordable to create.
BC Libraries' Digital Studio has been working with the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning (CDIL) and Apple to develop ways to integrate AR into the classroom through Apple's new Reality Composer platform. The examples below will open on any iPhone or iPad and represent, in the first case, a "born-digital" object (the robot) while the lion stamp is a real-world object of which a 3D representation was made in the Digital Studio.
An animated robot AR model from the Apple Quick Look gallery projected on to a real-world table:
Lion-headed stamp AR model created using ARKit:
Created by Jessica Linker and her Bryn Mawr College students, this VR reconstruction of an early 1900s biology lab was based on Bryn Mawr archival records. It was created with Unity, a commonly used VR platform.
Visit to interact with this project.
The ability to engage with and manipulate 3D models of real-world artifacts and spaces can allow for a deeper understanding of the objects and space in question (particularly in comparison to a traditional 2D image). For example, a recent collection of public domain cultural heritage models from museums and libraries from across the world numbering more than 1700 models has been made freely available to view and download.
The creation of 3D objects can be divided into two general processes, creating models from photos called photogrammetry, which involves the construction of a 3D digital surface (known as a mesh) based on a series of overlapping photographs of an object, and laser scanning, which is the process of using lasers bouncing off from an object to identify the shape of its surface.
There are a variety of ways to make your 3D model publicly available, either as part of a research question or in the classroom. The models below are shared using Sketchfab, an online hosting platform.
Here is a 3D model of a pre-hominid skull made for a BC Biology class. (It is made up of approximately 150 images and the mesh is made of 1.5 million triangles.):
Here is a 3D model of the "Hail Flutie" statue set up outside of BC's Alumni Stadium. (It is made up of approximately 75 photos and the mesh is made of 762k triangles.):
3D models can also be 3D printed, such as this print of a Roman statue:
VR and AR based games, and interactive stories more broadly, are becoming more common and, with the increasing availability of VR and AR technology, are becoming easier to make. (Unity, one of the most popular gaming engines, offers free access to students and individuals for educational use.) The incorporation of games and the creation of them are also becoming more common in scholarly work and in the classroom where they promote multimodal learning patterns and offer a deeper understanding of subject matter.
VR based games involve fully computer-generated worlds. An example is Rome Reborn, which can be viewed on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Closer to home, BC English professor Joseph Nugent and his team created “Joycestick,” an adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses into an immersive, 3D virtual reality computer game developed in Unity. Users don a VR eyepiece and headphones and, with gaming devices, navigate and explore various scenes from the book.
AR based games involve applying a computer-generated layer onto the real world. Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite mobile games are two.
Textual Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a and an used for encoding literary texts, historical documents, and the like. During the process, scholars use TEI to "markup" texts to indicate different aspects such as titles, chapter headings, line breaks, and handwritten marginalia, as well as to note significance and inscribe interpretation. Most commonly TEI is used to create critical editions and facsimiles.
Related terms:
Markup languages use tags to define elements within a digital document. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is used for encoding texts and employs a number of different standards and schemas.
Markup tags are in and out marks that “wrap” a text element, e.g., a title, header, single word, paragraph, etc. Below is a simple example using the more commonly known markup language, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language):
In a web browse the above looks like:
Their Eyes are Watching God was written by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937.
The <h2> tag marks the title as a header and determines the specific size of the header. The <p> tag marks the sentence as a paragraph or a general body of text and the <em> tag marks the title as emphasized (italicized).
The following example is from . It shows a portion of the markup written to create a facsimile of the original manuscript for Whitman's poem "The Argument."
As you can see in the TEI facsimile below, the Archive seeks to replicate the edits made in the manuscript as well as the layout of the text:
The TEI markup below looks very different from the facsimile but, if you look closely, you can probably understand some of what the markup is doing.
Text analysis can be done using "out of the box" tools or coding and scripting with the latter approach enabling scholars to explore more nuanced research questions.
Using "out of the box" tools, which don't require coding or scripting, is a good way to get started in text analysis as it will help users begin to understand possibilities and techniques. Voyant and Lexos are examples of such tools. (Mallet, used for topic modeling, is an example of a tool that requires coding but also provides users with a lot of guidance and preexisting code.)
Here is a Voyant instance that contains all of Shakespeare's plays. Stopwords like "thou" and "sir" have been applied to prevent them from dominating the results. (The selection of stopwords is part of the scholarly decision making that goes into text analysis.)
Visit to interact with this Voyant instance.
Coding is an umbrella term that involves using coding (or programming) languages to do things like create applications and websites. Scripting falls under coding and involves using coding languages to do things like automate processes and make websites more dynamic. Coding and scripting are typically done using a computer's command line or platforms like Jupiter Notebooks.
To get a sense of what coding and scripting look like in text analysis, here is a basic example from the Natural Language Toolkit, which uses the Python language. Here you can see a script being run that tags the parts of speech in the sentence, "And now for something completely different." (CC = coordinating conjunction, RB = adverb, IN = preposition, NN = noun, JJ=adjective. )
In this example from Programming Historian, you see a portion of a Python script used for counting word frequencies.
The hypertext medium affords scholars the opportunity to publish and present works in many different ways. As an example, the Digital Dante website contains scholarship ranging from commentary and analysis to a Divine Comedy digital edition to multimedia representations and responses to the author's works.
Visit to explore Digital Dante.
Text analysis involves using digital tools and one’s own analytical skills to explore texts, be they literary works, historical documents, scientific literature, or tweets. Approaches can be quantitative (e.g., word counting) and qualitative (e.g., and ), and tools can range from coding and scripting languages to "out of the box" platforms like and .
In the humanities, text analysis is closely associated with the concept of , which essentially means using computational methods to explore and query large (sometimes massive) corpora. The corpa or datasets, as they are more commonly called in the sciences and social sciences, can be structured or unstructured, and the results can have a data visualization component.
Related Terms:
Text mining (a term used more in the humanities), data mining (a term used more in the sciences and social sciences), and web scraping are techniques that use coding, scripting, and "out of the box" tools to gather text and create a corpus (or dataset).
Multimedia projects are typically created in a hypertext format. This project, Sound and Documentary in Cardiff and Miller's Pandemonium, was created as a digital companion to a traditional master's thesis. Using , an open-source publishing platform, the project weaves images, video, and audio to bring greater light and meaning to the research topic.
includes TEI based facsimiles of Newton's alchemical manuscripts, critical materials, an analysis tool, and educational resources.
(Note that you can click on "page image" to see an image of the original manuscript.)
is a critical edition, scholarly study, and textual archive of the Old English poem Cædmon’s Hymn. It is a good example of the use of TEI in medieval studies, which is heavily focused on manuscripts.
CSU Japanese American Digitization Project: An Exhibit uses Japanese-American internment documentation and other artifacts to tell a narrative. The linear format is facilitated by , the platform with which it is published and one that allows for the creation of narrative paths.
The Burns Library's The Object in the Archive provides a more traditional exhibit experience, meaning one that groups objects under unifying themes and topics. Originally physically displayed in the Burns Library, it is also an example of how a physical exhibit can be translated into digital.
Goin' North uses , an easy to use exhibit and digital collection platform. In addition to incorporating historical visual materials, the exhibit features a number of oral histories.
Hypertexts can be structured to create narrative paths and games. While a typical website platform like WordPress can be used to create such experiences, tools like Twine and Scalar were designed specifically for such purposes.
A Case of Hysteria, also an example of a digital exhibit, uses Scalar to create paths that take users through different topics.
Visit the site to explore the paths.
The Anachronist, created in Twine, is an example of both a narrative and a game in which players make choices that determine the outcome.
Visit to interact with the game.
In this text analysis example, Ted Underwood and David Bamman used BookNLP, a Java-based natural language processing code, to explore gender in 93,708 English-language fiction volumes. They articulate one of their major discoveries as follows:
There is a clear decline from the nineteenth century (when women generally take up 40% or more of the “character space” in fiction) to the 1950s and 60s, when their prominence hovers around a low of 30%. A correction, beginning in the 1970s, almost restores fiction to its nineteenth-century state. (One way of thinking about this: second-wave feminism was a desperately-needed rescue operation.)
Here , a database containing thousands of scholarly articles about COVID-19 and other related coronaviruses, provides a and visualization of 2437 journal articles. The approach they used, , is a natural language processing based generative statistical model.
Capturing the world in 360 degrees offers a different kind of immersive experience, one that began with the ability to create panorama shots with a phone and now is a common feature on everything from apartment tours to tourist attractions.
360 degree images, videos, and more complex experiences are becoming easier to create and share. In the academic world, these kinds of images can give the user a better understanding of a space or a more engaging digital experience on a particular subject. In many cases, these kinds of digital products can be combined with other immersive technologies, such as 3D modeling or VR.
360 tours are a common way to utilize these kinds of images, which can combine a "Google Street" view-like experience created from 360 images with further information. Recently, special exhibitions at BC's McMullen Museum of Art have been using 3DVista to create 360 versions of their exhibitions, including Indian Ocean Current: Six Artistic Narratives.
360 tours also provide access to spaces people might not be able to travel to or visit. One example is the Anne Frank Family home, which is part of Google Arts and Culture.
Visit to explore the Frank Family home.
360 experiences can be combined with photogrammetry/laser scans, like this digital model of the interior of the Scrovegni Chapel (Padua, Italy).
Finally, 360 has entered the world of video, with 360 videos now available for locations such as Petra, Jordan.
