Associate Professor Kate McDowell will present three keynotes on data storytelling this fall.
Her first keynote will be given at Library Research Seminar VIII: Telling Library Stories, which will be held from September 16-18 at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. A program of the American Library Association's Library Research Round Table, the conference brings together library practitioners, scholars, and students to share ideas and explore emerging research in the field of LIS.
In her talk, "Storytelling as Information Research: From Data Storytelling to Misinformation," McDowell will examine how storytelling strategies can be applied for the defense of public institutions that are currently under attack politically, financially, and via disinformation. She will discuss her work on the project Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians (DSTL), which provides data storytelling guidance and tools that help libraries reach audiences with stories based on data.
McDowell will deliver her second keynote, "Inspire, Advocate, Communicate: Library Data Storytelling," to the Pennsylvania Library Association on October 7 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She will introduce DSTL tools and strategies that academic libraries can use to communicate their data stories to various audiences, such as students, administrators, and funders.
She will deliver her third keynote at ICON Day 2024, which will be held on November 1 at the University of Iowa. ICON Day is a special event to promote excellence in teaching and learning through effective adoption and use of instructional technology. In her talk, "Data Storytelling and the Practice of Teaching and Learning," McDowell will discuss how stories and storytelling can be key to making data into meaningful and memorable information in the classroom and beyond. She will offer guidance for teaching data storytelling and promoting data literacy across a broad range of fields, from the humanities to the sciences.
McDowell's storytelling research has involved training collaborations with advancement staff both at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois system; storytelling consulting work for multiple nonprofits, including the 50th anniversary of the statewide Prairie Rivers Network that protects Illinois water; and storytelling lectures for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). McDowell researches and publishes in the areas of storytelling at work, social justice storytelling, and what library storytelling can teach the information sciences about data storytelling. She holds both an MS and PhD in library and information science from Illinois.