Data-Driven Documents: Visualizing library data with D3.js
Data-Driven Documents: Visualizing library data with D3.js
- Bret Davidson, North Carolina State University Libraries, bret_davidson@ncsu.edu
Several JavaScript libraries have emerged over the past few years for creating rich, interactive visualizations using web standards. Few are as powerful and flexible as D3.js[1]. D3 stands apart by merging web standards with a rich API and a unique approach to binding data to DOM elements, allowing you to apply data-driven transformations to a document. This emphasis on data over presentation has made D3 very popular; D3 is used by several prominent organizations including the New York Times[2], GOV.UK[3], and Trulia[4].
Power usually comes at a cost, and D3 makes you pay with a steeper learning curve than many alternatives. In this talk, I will get you over the hump by introducing the core construct of D3, the Data-Join. I will also discuss when you might want to use D3.js, share some examples, and explore some advanced utilities like scales and shapes. I will close with a brief overview of how we are successfully using D3 at NCSU[5] and why investing time in learning D3 might make sense for your library.
[1]http://d3js.org/ [2]http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/24/us/drought-crops.html [3]https://www.gov.uk/performance/dashboard [4]http://trends.truliablog.com/vis/pricerange-boston/ [5]http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/spaceassesstool