Associate Professor Kate McDowell has authored a new book that will equip readers with the skills to transform data into stories for library advocacy, social justice, and inclusivity. Critical Data Storytelling for Libraries: Crafting Ethical Narratives for Advocacy and Impact, the second book in a new ALA Editions series on Critical Cultural Information Studies, will be available next month.
"To become effective library advocacy storytellers—when making reports, writing newsletters, crafting presentations, or having casual conversations in the community—we need to dig deeper into the injustices that surround libraries as institutions and cultural spaces," said McDowell. "Data—numbers, statistics, charts, graphs, visuals, interactive dashboards—alone can’t tell the story."
Critical Data Storytelling for Libraries is based on McDowell's thirty years of library work as well as her workshops and consulting, through which she often assists struggling librarians with telling better data stories. According to McDowell, library workers who collect data are often siloed from those who tell stories about the library's impact.
"This book speaks to both audiences—data and story experts—to tackle common obstacles mindfully, with awareness of power and who has been historically excluded," she said. "My goal is to support all library workers, from the smallest rural public libraries to the largest academic ones, as they justify annual budgets, services, and, in many cases now, their very existence. We need critical and practical approaches in times like these in order to sustain libraries as vital democratic institutions."
In addition to topics such as data collection, narrative strategies, and audience, the book includes a chapter on strategies to combat library misinformation and tell stories for justice.
"Rising pro-censorship movements and shrinking budgets threaten institutions like libraries, where anyone can walk in the door without having to believe or buy anything. We are seeing active defunding of libraries at every political level in our society today, federal to local. Tragically, many detractors are reacting to misinformation about libraries rather than understanding their actual impact. Inspiring people in libraries to tell well-evidenced and inspiring data stories about what libraries mean for communities is key to library survival," said McDowell.
McDowell's interdisciplinary work examines how storytelling plays a vital role in humanizing data analysis and communication. She focuses on storytelling as information research, social justice storytelling, and how the history of library storytelling can enhance contemporary data storytelling. McDowell leads the nationally funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians project to equip libraries with narrative tools for data-informed advocacy, which has been used by librarians in over fifty countries. Her storytelling teaching was internationally celebrated with the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2022. She holds both an MS and PhD in library and information science from Illinois.