B Histograms of Years of Publication

After pie charts, histograms of years of publication were identified by study participants as their favorite visualization. Twelve participants were confident that histograms could facilitate understanding of the collection. One participant initially disagreed, but later changed his opinion to a more positive outlook. Here is how one of the participants explained her preference: “I think it provides quite

fascinating information. I think without it it is a little bit flat. You kind of getting general sense of what has been published throughout the history.” Histograms helped participants identify differences between publishing activities during the Soviet Ukraine and independent Ukraine. For instance, they were able to see that not many publications were published during the Soviet years, but more was published after

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Ukraine became independent. They could also understand how far back the collection goes, how books are associated with historical periods and in what political climates books were published. They could also identify years where there were gaps in library acquisitions. One participant said that histograms helped her realize what was going on in the collection and what sorts of subjects the books were going to cover.

The participants found the use of colour to identify different categories in the histograms very useful. This allowed participants to quickly compare time periods. Some participants indicated that categorization was especially useful “in this kind of case when a place changed based on government.” Although the categories presented to participants did not seem to create any controversy, one participant talked with some caution regarding the categories: “I do not know whether information like this will ever be controversial ... controversy on dates or names, or things like that. I have no idea. I do not know about that with respect to different countries, or if that would create some sort of conflict. But I find it interesting.” An example of possible controversy within a Canadian context was given by another participant: “In Canada we also have a landmark –the day of Canadian Confederation. If you talk about First Nations people they might not agree with that landmark. They might have a different landmark.”

Colours in histograms have been credited by the study participants with providing enhanced understanding, not only of collections but also of the history of regions and the historical relationship between neighbouring regions. One participant described how histograms helped her make sense of a part of the world about which she had little prior knowledge: “I've lived in North America for 30 years now. Before that I lived in the Philippines. Last year because of the interest that I have in holocaust I went to Poland. That was the first time I realized that I did not know much about Europe. You know, Poland was under this, under this that. I had very little knowledge about European history except for Spanish history, because I studied that. But it is interesting to see connected history map with Europe. I grew up thinking Russia — USSR. So I was not much familiar with Ukraine... So coming from ... from

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other side of the world this is beginning to make sense to me. ... I also see the struggle... In the

Philippines people are often upset with the Spanish that we were ... for 300 years. The same story here, instead of one country, you have different countries: Ukraine, Poland, Russia.”

Histograms helped participants gain greater insight into political and economic events, economic or technological changes, and the economic situation of publishing. This information was inferred from time periods and numbers of items published during each period as shown by the histogram

visualizations. A typical analysis of a histogram by one of the participants is as follows: “... I wondered why there were 4 books published in the Soviet Union as opposed to one. And then it was the matching with anniversary or so. I looked at them, looked where they were published, and things like that. Again the difference in economic trend too, where we can see in 8 years all of a sudden [a spike]... You sort of see other stuff going on there.” Another participant stated: “... years told me a lot about the economic situation of publishing, which in my head automatically went to... that is good to know, particularly, because more writing does not necessarily mean better writing. One tends to be more market savvy... So that you can see that happening [here] ...: even though in the Soviet period writing was what you can write, during the independent Ukraine you can write economically. You are still subject to one way or another.”

The majority of the participants expressed that histograms could also show the history of

disciplines. One participant justified this as follows: “It gives you the sense of scholars that are working on ... This was great, this was great. It may just be in terms of years of publication; that is something that I have a lot of experience with. Years of publications are used to describe the structure of the literature. And because I am also an information behaviour scholar when I look at the information practices, scholars and practices — this is the history of the discipline as well. So people work on these particular topics very little at the beginning — it does not surprise me.”

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During the think-aloud session, participants often used histograms to draw conclusions and to reason. Here are a few examples of reasoning statements, generalizations, and inferences that

participants made based on information they gathered from the histogram visualizations:

• “So, that tells me something about literature: one explanation, the economy gets better; the other explanation, there is freedom of speech is there, people are publishing more ... publications policies change...”

• “So again, not a lot of things published. A big year 1984. (4 titles) and more gaps, after that more consistency. All that points to some anniversary or something.” [That city celebrated a 200- anniversary in 1984].

• “This collection has been more stable in the development over the years.”

• “Books from the left part of the country were mostly published in blue period, whereas in this part of the country — many books were published in the red period.” [Blue represents

Independent Ukraine; red represents Soviet Ukraine].

Participants identified some shortcomings of the histogram, and a few improvements were suggested. Proposed improvements included adding better representations for the periods of gaps in publishing, adding colour codes to the legends, and improving/increasing interactions of the

visualizations with subject headings on the Kohonen Map. Another suggestion was to change the histograms from a 3-dimensional to a 2-dimensional format. Participants noted that when sitting at an angle to the computer screen, the histogram bars seemed skewed in the 3-D format.

In addition, after seeing histograms used to categorize a collection based on significant historical periods, users suggested using histograms to categorize collections based on other events. For example, a participant suggested that users interested in women’s studies would prefer a timescale based on legislation related to women’s suffrage. Alternately, historians studying the holocaust might prefer to use a timeline based on Soviet and post-Soviet rule because before the fall of the Soviet Union, the

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history of holocaust museums was represented in one way in the East, and another in the West (in the West historians focused on Hitler, while in the East the focus was on fascism). However, this does not necessitate that local timelines have very detailed categorizations. As noted by a few participants who were not involved in any kind of research, the nuanced, highly-detailed categorization of years of

publication might not always be useful. For users with limited knowledge of political leaders or regimes, more specific categorizations could become overwhelming and too difficult to understand. Instead, participants preferred to have the option to choose a suitable timeline for their needs.