Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about Cultural Collections
Olivia Vane · 2017
The work presented here is concerned with visualisation of digitised museum collections and archives, focusing on the relationship between data, visualisation and narrative. A contrast is presented between visualisations that show "just the data" and those that present the information in such a way as to tell a story using visual rhetorical devices such as trees and streams. The role of interaction in negotiating the tension between communicators'/researchers' desire to tell stories about their discoveries and the need for users to interact freely is explored. Novel visualisations of data from the Wellcome Library are used to outline key research questions.