I just attended a webinar called Visualizing Civic Health: Maximizing Impact through Infographics which was disappointingly brief and based on ridiculously expensive datasets and hiring graphic teams and/or buying a graphics package.

Depsite it’s shortcomings for a zero-dollar-budget public librarian looking to spark conversation about my community’s civic health, I was inspired by the idea of the infographics.

Here’s an example from the webinar’s host, the National Conference on Citizenship:
Chicago’s Civic Health Index 2010(pdf)

And an example from good.is:

A collaboration between GOOD and Column Five Media.

I want to make some of these for my Geek the Library campaign. I think it would help people to see how library use has increased and other library stats, as well as community information. Advocacy for library services or just about anything goes down easier with great graphics. And I can see how hosting great infographics on our library site will increase our library’s web presence, as the webinar moderators mentioned.

So thank you NCoC. I can’t afford your $15,000 datasets, or your even more expensive infographics service, but you have inspired me nevertheless!