Don’t Stress – Its Easel.ly!

The following blog post explores my experience with creating an infographic presentation.  To facilitate this exploration, three creation avenues were test driven:  easel.ly, piktochart, and infogr.am.  I found that infogr.am would be ideal for the presentation of statistical data for its ability to graph numerical figures and provide information in a sensical fashion on both the x and y axis of a chart.  Piktochart offers beautiful, visually stimulating methods to present and narrate data, but was a bit overwhelming and intimidating for a novice user.  The aptly named third infographic creation tool, Easel.ly, “eased” me into this new presentation format and set my mind at “ease”.  The one-minute tutorial featured on the initial screen of the site provided a welcoming, common sense approach to using an infographic to elevate the appeal and effectiveness of the presentation of data collected.  Further exploration yielded an impressive bank of thousands of templates with the ability to filter selections by categories to pair the information gathered with a complimentary graphic layout.  The input process is reminiscent of creating a Prezi presentation and was fairly “easy” to navigate.  I will be employing this resource and the others to “jazz up” the dissemination of information regarding library statistics including but not limited to:  circulation data, facility usage stats, class/grade level competition results, fundraising revenue stats, and much more!

The topic I chose to visually diagram was selected from a bank ideas documented within the archives of the Pew Research Center (PRC) which seeks to conduct research and release its findings to illuminate issues and trends that are important to the American citizenry and the global populace.  The following infographic, extracted from the “Internet, Science, and Technology” section of PRC’s database represents a topic extremely relevant to me as a new librarian – community attitudes about the function and efficacy of local public libraries and their awareness of the wide array of resources and tools available for consumption.  The survey was conducted between October 13 – November 15, 2015 and figures were rounded to whole values.   The responses of those surveyed who refused to comment are not represented.  2,752 adults over the age of 18 residing within random U. S. cities were polled in telephone interviews conducted at various times of the day using both cellular and land-line connections.  The survey was also administered in both English and Spanish.

Source Citation

Rainie, L. (2016). Libraries and Learning. Retrieved June 25, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/04/07/libraries-and-learning/