Teaching Data Visualization Basics to Market the Value of a Hospital Library: An Infographic as One Example

Abstract

With a major concern being to keep hospital library doors open and hospital librarians working, hospital librarians need to learn new skills and use a variety of marketing techniques to show the value of their programs and services. This article is a follow-up to a 2014 Medical Library Association poster, entitled Building Infographics and Marketing the Value of a Hospital Library, along with a MidAtlantic National Network of Libraries Boost Box session called Infographics 101: Graphic Approaches to Library Marketing. This article will explain how teaching librarians basic data visualization principles can help them learn how to create better marketing tools, and in turn help them feel more comfortable approaching data visualization topics that play an increasingly important role in the biomedical community. Particularly, focus will be on using tools with low barriers of entry for novices to create an informative infographic that demonstrates the value of the hospital library and its librarian. Lastly, basic marketing principles will be reviewed and suggestions regarding their applications in relation to infographics will be made.

KEYWORDS:

• data visualization
• marketing
• infographic