Tuesday July 18, 2023
Technology has led to the creation of ever-increasing amounts of data and has also given us the tools to make sense of it in potentially novel and creative ways. So whether your primary role is in data-wrangling, or if you want/need to learn how to use data to support your evidence-based practice, or to advocate your point with management, funding bodies or your users, this stream has great ideas for you.
Workshop 1
Introduction to OpenRefine for Librarians
Trainer
Outline
Got tabular data that you want to better understand or clean up? OpenRefine can help! OpenRefine is an open source tool that you can use to explore your data, split it into more manageable fragments, and tame inconsistencies. In this workshop, we will introduce OpenRefine and cover basics to get you started with this powerful tool. We will learn how to import data and perform simple operations on it to get it looking spick and span. We will also explore how to connect OpenRefine with web services and reconcile your data using external sources. We’ll finish off with how to export your freshly cleaned data for further use.
Software requirements
A recent version of OpenRefine.
OpenRefine can be downloaded for free: https://openrefine.org/download
Short talk 1
ChatGPT for Librarians
Presenter
Outline
The “ChatGPT for Librarians” short talk is designed to provide librarians with practical insights and guidance on leveraging the capabilities of ChatGPT, a powerful language model/AI service from OpenAI, to enhance their library services. The short talk will cover various topics, including the potential real world role of AI in libraries, understanding ChatGPT, and hands-on exercises for implementing it effectively.
Short talk 3
Computer Says No: Having better conversations about automated decision-making
Presenter
Outline
Automated decision-making is not new, but the increasing availability of large datasets and compute power, combined with increased interest in using data to drive decisions, has meant that automated decisions are being made concerning ever more areas of our lives. Some of these decisions are trivial, but others can have significant impacts on the opportunities that we receive. There is a growing body of cautionary tales about the weaknesses of these data-driven approaches and an accompanying proliferation of frameworks and principles that aim to set the direction for “AI Ethics”. However, many of these problems are not new and existing principles, such as procedural fairness, already offer robust guidance on good decision-making. This presentation will examine how any organisation using automated decision-making can ask better questions and build in safety checks using new and emerging approaches.
Workshop 3
PowerBI – Data visualisation and analysis for Librarians
Trainer
Outline
After completing the PowerBI data visualisation session, librarians will have an introduction on how to use this powerful tool to analyse and visualise data from their libraries. They will learn how to import and connect data from various sources, create interactive visualisations, and design professional-looking dashboards. Additionally, they will learn some best practices for data visualisation, including how to choose the right chart type, how to use colour effectively, and how to present data in a clear and meaningful way. By the end of the session, librarians will have the skills and knowledge to start their journey on using PowerBI to communicate data insights to stakeholders and make data-driven decisions to improve library services.
Software requirements
Power BI (available for download on Windows operating systems only).
The free version of PowerBI Desktop available on the Microsoft website: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/. Please download any ‘recent’ version (newer than 2020).