Registration is still open for our April 1, 2025 virtual conference: Voices Through Data: Integrating Information Science, Storytelling, and Digital Literacy
Check out the program with abstracts and speaker bios below. You can also check out the brief, at-a-glance flyer version here.
9:00 am - 9:15 am
Welcome, NEASIS&T Chapter Update, and Conference Overview
9:15 am - 10:00 am
Keynote: Storytelling Wisdom and Information Research
Abstract: Storytelling is an old practice with new implications for the evolution and dissemination of information. Building on the data, information, knowledge, and wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy, the S-DIKW framework (S for Storytelling) provides a theoretical framework for understanding information and misinformation in story form. Applications of storytelling include strategies for the defense of public institutions—especially libraries and public health agencies—currently under attack politically, financially, and via disinformation. The in-development Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians provides a working example for how information professionals can combine data and storytelling to fortify information institutions, and this is the basis for the in-progress book Critical Data Storytelling for Libraries. This work draws on a new concept of critical data storytelling that focuses on storytelling power, uncovering who has it, how it operates, and its consequences for peoples’ lives. Rooted in critical theory, the book promotes ethical use of data storytelling by recognizing its potential to both include and exclude. These theoretical approaches have practical implications for communities, social justice, and data literacy, and as a foundation for practical intervention into contemporary information crises.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Kate McDowell, Associate Professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focuses on storytelling as information research. Her work explores data storytelling, social justice storytelling, and library storytelling traditions in contemporary practice. Published in leading journals including JASIST and Library Quarterly, she leads the nationally-funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians project. McDowell received the 2022 ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award and has delivered over twenty invited talks in two years for library and educational organizations nationwide.
10:00 am - 10:30 am
Presentation I: Long COVID and American Healthcare: Bolstering Social and Emotional Support
Abstract: This project uses data storytelling to bridge information science, health information, public health data collection, and the ethical dilemmas of processing qualitative data quantitatively. The presenter’s first-time data storytelling project concerns a Long COVID qualitative survey conducted by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2024. Leveraging expertise in LIS-archival investigations and the interpretive paradigm, Deborah created a Data Essentials & Hypothesis Building Project in fall 2024 with guidance from COVID Information Commons (CIC). A literature review juxtaposes LIS studies on information use and chronic illness with medical and health sciences research on Long COVID. Methods include a research question and hypothesis. Results feature visualizations of respondents’ geographic distribution, age range, and private insurance status. These attributes contextualize data storytelling about the behavioral survey question on social and emotional support. The story focuses on sharing reliable health information as a form of social and emotional support in daily life while Long COVID remains challenging to diagnose. Recommendations underscore tendencies in researcher bias that exacerbate health disparities. The presenter would like to credit COVID Information Commons for help in building the project, and share a link to the program’s website.
Speaker Bio: Deborah A. Garwood, PhD, is a former Paul Otlet Fellow at the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, Science History Institute, Philadelphia, PA. Deborah completed her doctoral dissertation in Information Science at Drexel University's College of Computing and Informatics in 2021 under the advisement of Dr. Alex Poole, and her dissertation work explored the information practices of archivists at history of medicine collections in Philadelphia during the COVID pandemic. The 2022 recipient of the Eugene Garfield Dissertation Award sponsored by ALISE, Deborah’s research interests center on human information behavior, information practice, information work, archives, metadata and data science, and digital stewardship.
10:30 am - 11:00 am
Presentation II: Dear Data (Literacy): A Multimodal Creative Campus Project
Abstract: The digital meets the analog as two Digital Scholarship Libraries share the journey of a Dear Data project at their university. Based on Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec’s Dear Data, the program has evolved in three years with many different permutations, including data visualizations on postcards, data journaling, data portraits, an art exhibit, credited classes, community partners, and collaborations. The creative venture has allowed an interdisciplinary group of scholars to spread digital literacy across a series of creative activities that help participants embody their digital footprint and personal data. The presentation, which includes a fun and interactive data portrait activity for participants, will touch on how the librarians connect the project to their other data science and digital humanities work and use pen and paper to grow the network of digital practitioners in their community.
Speaker Bios:
- Halie Kerns is the Digital Scholarship Librarian for Data Science and STEM at Binghamton University. She offers support for data-driven digital tools for research and pedagogy, including data collection, analysis, visualization, and management.
- Ruth Carpenter is a Digital Scholarship Librarian at Binghamton University where they support digital humanities projects through a variety of means including consultations, workshops and class instruction. Their MLIS is from the University of Pittsburgh and they hold an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland College Park. Their research interests change yearly, but generally can be found in the realm of gaming, digital borders and digital scholarship as a community building tool.
11:00 am - 11:30 am
Panel: Hawaiian Plantation Employee Records: A Multi-Disciplinary Exploration of Hawaiian History
Abstract: The Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum and the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives partnered in the mid-2010s the only known effort to digitize and make available to the public a substantial collection of Hawaiian plantation employee records. This panel features a multi-disciplinary approach to these records and includes a discussion on the necessity of a comprehensive historical and sociological contextual understanding of the populations that the records document; the digital humanities work that has been done using the raw data from the records and what data analysis is planned; and the digital future of the records.
Speaker Bios:
- Sonia Pacheco is the Social Sciences Librarian at the Claire T. Carney Library at UMass Dartmouth. Prior to assuming this position, she worked as the librarian archivist for the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese American Archives at the same institution. She received a master’s degree in Information Studies (Archives focus) from the University of Toronto and a master’s in History from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her professional interests include the relationship between archives and immigrant communities, capturing and preserving community memory, and teaching primary source literacy.
- Chelsea Fernandes is a Librarian Archivist for the Ferreira Mendes Portuguese American Archives and the Luso Afro Brazilian Archives Collections at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Prior to this position she served as a Digital Services Librarian in charge of the institutional repository at Bridgewater State University. Before moving to New Bedford with her husband, who is from the city, Chelsea earned a master's degree in Archives Management from Simmons University with a focus in digital asset management.
- Catherine Titzer is a student at Stanford University pursuing a B.S. in Symbolic Systems with a minor in Theater and Performance Studies. Her research focuses on the intersection of digital humanities, cultural heritage, and social justice. Catherine is pioneering a digital humanities project on Hawaiʻi’s plantation life, focusing on preserving and amplifying the stories of immigrant workers through analysis of 1900s archival records. She has also worked on disability rights research, developing haptic technology to increase accessibility to cultural and artistic assets. Passionate about using interdisciplinary approaches to address systemic inequities, Catherine combines technology, humanities, and advocacy to drive meaningful change through innovative research initiatives.
11:30 am - 11:45 am
Break
11:45 am - 12:15 pm
Presentation III: Faith in Data (this session will not be recorded)
Abstract: Librarians at Wellesley College have sought to engage the campus community in critical media and information literacy around mis- and disinformation by hosting a series of workshops. These events have focused on equipping attendees with strategies to critically evaluate sources on current events, including data, social media, and mainstream news. Library and archives professionals occupy a third space in the academy that doesn’t always grant us the same affordances of freedom of movement through campus conversations as faculty or students. We will share our plans for our fall 2023 mis- and disinformation workshop on media in Palestine and Israel that brought an overfull room of students, faculty, and staff to the table but also caught the attention of our institutional administrators. In our presentation, we will focus not only on the mechanics but also more broadly on the opportunity for librarians’ expertise and the challenges inherent in our position on campus.
Speaker Bios:
- Daria Hafner (JD, LLM, MSLIS) is the Social Sciences Research & Instruction Librarian at Wellesley College.
- Sarah Moazeni (MA, MSLIS) is a Research and Instruction Librarian at Wellesley College.
12:15 pm - 12:25 pm
Lightning Talk: Visualizing Emotional Trends in Oral History Archives: A Case Study of MOCA
Abstract: This presentation explores the use of AI tools and data visualization to analyze emotional trends in oral history archives, using the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) as a case study. By employing natural language processing (NLP) techniques such as KeyBERT for keyword extraction and BERTopic for topic modeling, the project transforms qualitative oral history data into interactive, visual narratives. These visualizations make emotional trends more accessible and engaging, fostering deeper connections with the audience.
The presentation will highlight the workflows and methodologies, including the integration of Python for data processing and Tableau for creating dynamic visualizations. Key themes include ethical considerations in handling sensitive archival data, the role of digital tools in enhancing data storytelling, and strategies for engaging diverse audiences with complex cultural narratives.
This project addresses the conference theme by showcasing how storytelling can make data more accessible and impactful. It also aligns with the priorities of protecting stories in digital archives and using AI to shape the future of data storytelling. The session will conclude with insights on how digital humanities initiatives can empower museums to engage audiences in innovative ways.
Speaker Bio: Murphy Yueer Sun, Graduate student pursuing an MSc in Museum and Digital Culture at the Information School of Pratt Institute, with a minor in Digital Humanities. My research interests: digital heritage preservation through data analysis (e.g., NLP frameworks), the integration of XR technologies to enhance interactive storytelling in museum collections.
12:25 pm - 1:10 pm
Workshop: The People Behind Named Places: Getting Creative with Civic Data
Abstract: In this session, participants will gain insight into how civic data sources, original research, and public contributions can be used to highlight local history through creative approaches to personal biography.
Launched in 2022 as a collaboration between the Queens Memory Project at Queens Public Library and Urban Archive, the Queens Name Explorer is an interactive map with biographical profiles and personal remembrances spanning more than 1,200 places in the borough. Drawing on data from NYC’s Department of Parks, Department of Transportation, and others, the project offers a user-friendly way to explore local history, from looking up people by name or characteristics (such as by roles like musicians, activists, and politicians), “touring” a neighborhood and clicking on profiles, and using the information on the map to consider how practices of commemoration include and exclude individuals, communities, and their stories.
Following this introduction, participants will be guided through a series of prompts to think about how named places closer to home can be a starting point for students working with local history. Participants will learn more about public data sources and consider how creative uses of civic data and research can be used to investigate their own neighborhoods, to think about who gets commemorated, and to find ways to remember the neighbors and local stories that are important to them.
Speaker Bios:
- Meral Agish is the interim director of the Queens Memory Project, a community-led archiving program and oral history collection co-administered by Queens Public Library and Queens College CUNY.
- Mary Bakija is a Researcher and Writer for the Queens Memory Project's Name Explorer, an interactive map explores the individuals whose names grace public spaces across the borough of Queens.
- David Engelman is a Researcher and Writer for the Queens Memory Project's Name Explorer, an interactive map explores the individuals whose names grace public spaces across the borough of Queens.
- Jessica Sucher is the Outreach Coordinator for Name Explorer, an interactive mapping project that highlights the stories behind the names of streets and public places in Queens. Jessica has led engagement, access, and community arts initiatives in a wide range of NYC-based non-profits, with a focus on participatory and community-based projects.
1:10 pm - 1:15 pm
Concluding Remarks