Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 9

Tyler and I met this morning to go over editing on my Project A.I.M. story. Tyler permitted me to write this piece as I would for a magazine, which is how I prefer to write anyhow, and touched on how to write a compelling lede. Despite how confident I feel about my writing ability, it felt humbling to have my piece eviscerated by Tyler. I learned that I was playing it safe and afraid to take chances or add my personality for fear of losing my journalistic integrity. 

Tyler recommended I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders to help develop my writing skills, which I promptly ordered. One of the most humbling parts of this internship was that I thought I had all the skills to be successful, but it's a beautiful thing to be open to any possibilities and always be learning new skills and trying to better yourself. 

I'm lucky that I have a background in Communications and strong communications skills. Without those skills, I would have never made it to the finish line. Despite the ways I didn't show up for this practicum, I continue to acknowledge my faults and weaknesses and try to learn and do better with each step I take. 

The following is a quote by George Saunders that relates to this: 

“Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.” 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 8

During this week of November 07 to 13th, I had an opportunity to sit in on the morning meetings with the Fraser Valley Current. I liked how efficient the team was, and I loved seeing how they checked in on stories, divided the workload, offered resources or help to one another, and their dynamic. On Wednesday the 17th, after a week of playing email tag and trying to set up an in-person meet, I had quite a long phone interview with Janne (president) of the Streamkeepers. She invited me to Miami River on November 22 to watch a Chum release and meet the rest of the Streamkeepers. 

This past weekend, I spent four days in Squamish in the woods this past week doing my Wilderness First Responder course. The course came up last minute and was sponsored by Indigenous Women Outdoors and The North Face. The course was incredibly intensive, as a course that gives you skills on par with those of a paramedic should be. Even though I have no extra time to do a course like this, I couldn't say no to the opportunity. I brought my laptop in the evenings, thinking I could get a lot of my work done at the hotel, but by the time the evenings came, I was too tired. 

I feel like I let many people down this semester because so many career opportunities kept coming up, and I kept thinking I could do everything. I am especially sad that I didn't give the Fraser Valley Current my full attention because I had wanted to work with them for some time. I hope my writing skills will surprise them, but I wish I had shown up better and gained more skills to help propel my career as a writer forward. 

Currently, I have 22 out of 64 hours left, which I will have to fit into the next two weeks. I can knock off about ten writing this salmon story and about 5 or 6 with the other interviews I need to do and transcribing. I have reached out to Tyler Thibault at the Department of Fisheries to speak with him, and he's connected me with the DFO's media personnel to okay this interview. He will also connect me with the Chehalis River Hatchery to get a quote about their involvement in this project. I have also reached out to Mike Pearson at Pearson Ecological to discuss the recovery strategy plan he wrote for the Miami River that Janne from the Streamkeepers mentioned during our interview. 

Moving forward, I think it would be cool to learn how Tyler or his team prepare for interviews and prepare their stories and the process they go through when writing on as I go off my basic intuition and what I've learned in school, but I am curious what it's like for someone already working in this field. I would also love to learn tips on making interviews more efficient, as my interviews are always super long. This does work in my favour sometimes because I'm really good with people and they often love sharing details with me because I'm curious and ask a lot of questions BUT on the flip side, when I go to transcribe and write, it feels like I have a daunting amount of information. 

Here are some photos I took at the Chum release on Tuesday morning.

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 7

Considerations on work/life balance: Sometimes, a moment can knock you so far off your axis that it presents an opportunity to reimagine your life. How many of us are considering burnout right now? What worth do those far-off successes really hold in the grand scheme of things? 

Sometimes, I spread my work on my floor like jeopardy tiles, and as for my shortcomings, they are nullified, maintaining my words, kneeling over them, marking x for rework, y for language, z for title.

When this morning came, I sank beneath my blankets and did some simple math totalling the week before: +80 hours work, +5 nature walks, +4 missed deadlines, +9 cups of coffee, +1 small epiphany—I am never sure, I realized, how much space it takes to live—the new week's todo list unfolding in front of me. I don’t want this life. I have my sights on something different. Something that ignites instead of burns.

Memory leaks through, a heavy sieve—it knows the moments when I couldn’t afford a meal, knows how easily ones worth is quantified by output. I let my fingers walk the letters of my words, examine their own pressure, re-learning language, infantile as ever. 

I can see outside of it right now (thank you, Jenny Odell), and it’s often through rectangles of sunlight on water, often scraps of paper picked up by wind caught in the roof corners, often the sound of someone laughing pitched upward, or tires turning out the gravel reminding of the road ahead, all the sounds of forward if forward made a noise. I invite you to reexamine the limitless possibilities in front of you. Life’s a flicker in the side-view mirror.

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 6

After last week's interview for Project AIM, I transcribed my interview, edited the transcription and prepared notes for writing the story. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I was looking for with this internship, and the biggest thing I was hoping for was to feel a sense of community and have more of a shadowing aspect. This may be where expectations and communication on what I was looking for had a disconnect. I spend a lot of time writing stories on my own, which, of course, can be a great way to gain more experience, but I hoped to see how someone already working in journalism handles the story process.  

This coming week, Tyler has invited me to join morning meetings, I will be spending time finishing my first story, and he's sent two other potential stories my way. 

Moving forward, communicating the want to see the behind-the-scenes of already working professionals will be my priority. I've also been thinking about some questions in regard to my career choice:

• How can I become intentional about my life?
• How to best orientate my life?
• When I cultivate my focus, I am more centred. Returning to a meeting Robert and I had last week: "Direct your focus."
• When I split my focus in too many directions, I begin to lose all focus. 
  
  

What I want out of my life is a career that creates balance. I'm not sure what it is yet. All I know is the past few months, I have been working up until I sleep and through weekends. I continue to move closer to burnout. How can you balance your career? Why does it feel like if I am not constantly saying yes to things to push my career forward, then I am going to fall behind 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 5

October 24, 2022

Monday morning started with a meeting with Tyler Olsen to learn how he creates the daily newsletters. Tyler explained how the layout process goes, what information they include, the distribution process, and why these dailies are important. Following the meeting with Tyler, I sent a follow-up email to Lolehawk to see if they're still open to an interview for the Good Medicine Singers group, and I sent an email to Tiffany Francis at Project AIM to interview about their project that brings non-profit free menstrual and incontinence products to people in the Fraser Valley. Tiffany connected me with co-founder, Miel, and we spent some time corresponding to figure out a time I could come out for an interview. 

October 27, 2022

This morning I drove out to Agassiz to meet with Miel Bernstein, the co-founder of Project AIM. The drive from Vancouver to Agassiz typically takes me about 1.5 hours, but on this day (due to weather, shut down sections on the highway from fallen powerlines), it took just over 2 hours each way. When I arrived at the barn Miel and her team welcomed me, and we spent 1.5 hours discussing the project, followed by a photo shoot of Miel and the products. I felt pretty inspired by the work that Project AIM is doing and am looking forward to sitting down to write the piece. 

I saw that Project AIM posted this on their Facebook after my interview with them, and it felt pretty good to be seen in this way. I spent a lot of time developing my reporting/interviewing/people skills for this exact reason.

Here is the photo I took of Miel at the interview: 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 4

This week started strong with a photo assignment out at sea for The Narwhal. I was nervous about going out for a second shoot with them because the first one didn't turn out the best. I reached out to a journalist friend Gavin to discuss how he goes about a photo assignment. He discussed his process of introducing himself, thinking of a shot list and what equipment to bring, and shared stories of imposter syndrome and mess-ups. I appreciated this advice and thought it would be helpful for more people to share their stories of "failure." Because of this, I wrote a tweet asking the journalism community to share some of their stories with me. This experience has taught me a lot that I think I can bring forward to my work at this practicum. 

While I was out at sea, I had the thought to message Tyler to discuss the practicum and joining in on their morning and design meetings. When I returned home to my email, I had a message in my inbox from Tyler. Great minds! We touched base on how things were going, and he discussed bringing me in on the newsletter process next week. I explained how I still hadn't heard back from any of the people I reached out to for the salmon story, and we decided to move on from that story. The next day he sent me an email with another story about an Agassiz-based non-profit bringing free menstrual and incontinence products to people in need in the valley. 

Starting Monday, I'll be learning the layout process, and things will be picking up storywise. I am really looking forward to what the next month brings. 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 3

I must admit, week three was on the slower end when it came to my practicum. Because I had been working and volunteering so much, my schoolwork across all classes fell behind, and I spent this week catching up. I did send out an email to Grace Kennedy at Fraser Valley Current and Dr. Lolehawk Laura Buker who is a professor at UFV who has been working with us on a number of Halq'emeylem stories, and a singer in the Good Medicine Singers group. They are currently working to create new songs in Halq'emeylem, and Grace pitched them as a story for me to write. I researched the group and am looking forward to hearing back from Lolehawk to share a conversation on the topic. 

As with previous weeks, my struggles with time and project management continued. I had to reach out to all the writers of the pieces I am editing for SAD Magazine, have meetings with Tracy and my partner for the Climate Disaster Project, do research for my Narwhal photo assignment, send out invoices for previous freelancing contracts, and catch up on my communications and creative writing class work. 

A big part of this week included research to get organized. I watched some videos by a Youtuber named Nathaniel Drew, who inspired me to start using my Notion project board again. Here is a previous snip of how I organized projects and how I will continue to organize them moving forward. 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 2

 

September 23rd, 2022

Today I drove out to Weaver Creek Spawning Channel in Agassiz to check out the progress of the spawning season and see which nations were in the area. It's quite a long drive each way, about 1.5 hours from my place in Vancouver, but the drive is peaceful and provides lots of thinking time. When I got to the creek, I saw it was dry and temporarily closed. I drove by Sts'ailes First Nation and made a note to contact them when I got home. Because Weaver Creek was dry, I took a little stroll down at Kilby Park, which is situated on the confluence of the Harrison and Fraser rivers, where I found this salmon (photographed above) decomposing back into the beach. I called Sts'ailes First Nation to try and talk to someone, but the person wasn't available so I put a note to call back.

On October 03rd, I emailed Tyrone McNeil at Sto:Lo Tribal Council, Kelsey Charlie with  Sts'ailes First Nation, and spoke on the phone with Sts'ailes administration about alternative ways to contact Kelsey. I tried calling his cell phone, but the calls did not go through. Later this day, I emailed Tyler and Grace about struggles contacting either, and Tyler provided some other contacts, so I reached out to Ralph Leon on Facebook. Tyler also met with me over Zoom as I asked him if he had any tips for navigating multiple stories at once. Outside of this practicum, I was writing a story for Chatelaine Magazine and doing a photo assignment for The Narwhal and found it challenging to take my mind out of a story and put it into another out of fear of losing the inspiration. Tyler was very helpful with tips and opened up about how many journalists have a tough time navigating this, but in the end, I took a lot out of this conversation and continue to work toward being better at project and time management. 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 1

September 20th, 2022

Today was my first meeting with Tyler Olsen at Fraser Valley Current. Tyler was friendly and approachable and had lots of information to share. I asked any question that came to mind, like how the practicum would work, if I could be a part of the layout process meetings to learn and how many stories I would likely manage throughout my practicum. 

In the meeting, I explained how much I loved the story Sumas Lake, the Nooksack River, and the historic roots of a 21st Century disaster that they produced last year due to the flooding in Sumas Prairie. I went into great detail about how much I respect and admire such in-depth, local-forward reporting, especially with how they included stories from Indigenous perspectives and sourced the Stó꞉lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas. This type of reporting is so important to me, especially as an Indigenous person. 

Following this conversation, I pitched my idea of a story on the yearly salmon spawning season up at Weaver Creek and surrounding areas and how the creek and many creeks in British Columbia are dry due to the drought due to long-term persistent climate change. Tyler explained the process of creating the Sumas prairie story, which inspired me to go forward with the salmon story. Tyler then reached out to me with some contacts to connect with and move forward. 

Another one of my classes this semester is the Climate Disaster Project with Tracy Sherlock and Sean Holeman.  I've found that some of the content that we are learning in this class to be benefical when it comes to working with vulnerable/historically marginalized communities, and on topics such as the climate crisis. We watched a lecture named A deep dive into June-November 2021 weather in B.C. - Is this a new normal? by KPU Geography instructor Joe Koch, which provided valuable research on the changing weather in British Coulmbia. We also read an article called The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, where she examines acts of intimacy through a variety of experiences in the medical world. Some of my favourite quotes that I wrote down to take with me forward as a journalist are: 

"Empathy requires inquiry." 

"Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see." 

"Empathy means realizing no trauma has discreate edges."

"Empathy isn't just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves." 

A goal that I have for this practicum moving forward is to expand on my skills in time and project management. As someone who is in a full-time course load, working, volunteering, and more, I have found prioritizing and managing projects to be a struggle. I went out and bought myself a day planner called RoteRunner, which has so many spaces for project and life planning that I suspect it will help me keep things in better order. 

Significantly more people are borrowing electronic materials from B.C. Public Libraries. Here's why

Demand for electronic materials has drastically increased in B.C. libraries since the onset of COVID-19. 

While analyzing data from B.C. Public Libraries Statistics (2002-Present), I came across the rising trend in the borrowing of electronic materials and wondered if the increase was due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At first, the scope of libraries I was trying to look at seemed a little too ambitious, so I narrowed it down to the top five municipal libraries (based on estimated service population) in British Columbia. After deciding which libraries to focus on, I condensed the data so it only focused on what I wanted to include in my final visualization. 

When analyzing the raw data, the first step was to compare the difference in electronic materials borrowed in 2019 and 2020, figure out the percentage increases/decreases, and calculate the average, according to the Annual Survey Questions from B.C. Public Libraries Statistics (2002-Present), electronic materials include eBooks and eAudioBooks, Databases (FullText), eLearning Platforms, Streaming Services and Other Electronic Resources. 

Once finished, I learned that the average increase in borrowing electronic materials from 2019 to 2020 was 21 per cent. This jump felt so significant between the two years that I could only hypothesize that it was due to COVID-19.

According to an article written for CBC in June 2020, Maryse Zeidler says, "Libraries across the country [had] closed most of their services to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. But many [were] still offering electronic materials to patrons hungry for reading material."

Wanting to learn more about the five libraries I chose to focus on specifically, I reached out to the Chief Librarian of each library to ask them their thoughts about the increase. Only two responded. 

For Greater Victoria Public Library, I was directed to Kelly Ridgeway, Media Inquiries, Ridgeway told me that they had a 52 per cent increase in digital circulation in 2020, but because physical branches were closed for several weeks, "there was a 92 per cent increase in the use of digital resources between April and June 2020."

Surinder Bhogal from Surrey Public Library forwarded my request to Niki Penz, manager of Collections Services, who said that because of the increase after lockdown, they were "happy and grateful to be able to pivot some of [their] collections budget to improving access to [their] ebook collection during the first months of the pandemic" but emphasized that their community relied on the opportunity to gather and use their physical resources.

In January of 2021, Goodereader.com, a website dedicated to the latest news about audiobooks, ebooks, e-notes, e-readers and digital publishing, wrote that primarily due to the pandemic, "Overdrive has reported that libraries all over the world have collectively loaned out over 289 million ebooks, which is a 40% increase from 2019." Showing that despite an overall trend in the borrowing of electronic materials rising from previous years, they suspected that the significant jump this year was because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Though four of B.C.'s largest municipal libraries saw an increase in the borrowing of electronic materials in 2020, Burnaby saw a decrease. Despite Burnaby Public Library making digital materials a priority after closing its locations to the public on March 17, 2020, its annual report shows no details on why their annual data shows a decrease in the borrowing of electronic materials. I reached out to Beth Davies, The Chief Librarian of the Burnaby Public Library, to ask if she had any insight into the decline. Davies connected me with Trish Mau, Director of Collections and Technology, but I have yet to hear back. 

Overall, my research correlates with my hypothesis that the drastic increase in the borrowing of electronic materials in B.C. Public Libraries from 2019 to 2020 were likely caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but external data sources could help strengthen findings. 

Incorporating feedback: In response to Data Update #3, Chad mentioned that I should change the title of my visualization from "eBooks and eAudiobooks" to "electronic materials," which I agreed with and changed. He also mentioned that I define what the libraries consider electronic materials to provide context for readers, which I added. He noted that the title in my visualization doesn't need attribution, so I removed it.

JRNL 3165: Data Update 3

Chart:
This chart shows the difference between the circulation of all electronic materials in B.C.'s top five largest municipal libraries from 2019 to 2020.

Unanswered Questions:

• What is the percentage of the change in the circulation?
• Why did the circulation in Burnaby decrease?
• How does this compare to previous years (ex: 2018 to 2019)?

How would you get the data?
According to the City of Burnaby's website, anyone can access most of the information held by the City of Burnaby through a regular request from city staff without using the B.C. Freedom of Information (FOI) and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). So I would reach out to Beth Davies, The Chief Librarian of the Burnaby Public Library, who serves as the library's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Officer under FIPPA. I would email Beth in a detailed manner similar to that of an FOI Request (to ensure I receive the details I'm seeking) and ask for more information on the circulation of electronic materials in 2019 and 2020.

Incorporating Feedback:
I listened to Chad and filtered down all the raw data from my data set for 2019 and 2020 and copied them into separate small data slices (changes to the dataset can be found here). Then I put them side by side in Excel for comparison. I then calculated the percentage to see the variance between the years but was unsure how to include that in my final visualization. 

JRNL 3165: Data Update 2

1. Lead (One Sentence)
Demand for eBooks and eAudiobooks has drastically increased in B.C. libraries since the onset of COVID-19, according to B.C. Public Library Statistics. 

2. Excel Workbook Link and Explanation

In my small slice data, I wanted to show how Digital Circulation has increased in the top five municipal libraries (based on estimated service population) in British Columbia over the past three years. 

My second data update hit a load of roadblocks, which I think are necessary to point out before moving on to the third update. After meeting with Chad to discuss narrowing down the focus of my data, I decided to focus my dataset on how digital lending has changed since the onset of COVID-19. I felt as though I could create a multifaceted line graph that visually displayed these changes using different colours for each of the various libraries. The x-axis would have the years (thinking 2018 to 2020), and the y-axis would have the amount circulated  (I have not decided at which increments I want this to be yet) of all electronic materials.  

 

This is where the problem begins. When you look at previous years in my dataset, there is data missing on the estimated service population, making it hard to sort my data to create multiple small slices of data for each year (which are needed to calculate the differences between each year). Despite looking at the data from BC Data Catalogue, I haven't found the solution to this yet. 

I took Chad's advice and hid all the extra rows of data that didn't pertain to my focus so that I could look more clearly at the specific data about digital lending. I left the circulation of all materials section there (for now) in case I wanted to compare and contrast that with the circulation of electronic materials. Chad also recommended that it could be useful to narrow my focus to one type of library system instead of the three mentioned in the raw data, which is how I ended up with the top five municipal libraries. 

After this roadblock, I decided to dig further to see if this bar chart would be possible. If you look at the 2019 Yearly Statistics on the Vancouver Public Library website, it shows that Digital Circulation increased 4.9% from 2018 to 2019. Whereas when you look at the 2020 Yearly Statistics, you can see an increase of 36.9% from 2019 to 2020. This is a huge jump from the previous year, and one can only assume that it was due to libraries shutting down with the onset of COVID-19. 

My plan is to use my data from the BC Data Catalogue to calculate the growth between years similar to how it was done with the Yearly Statistics on the Vancouver Public Library website but with the top five largest municipal libraries in B.C. 

3. Original Dataset Link
The original dataset can be found here. 

4. News Story/Study Link and Brief Summary 

I found the article "Surrey Libraries introduces 'superloan' program for some eBooks, eAudiobooks," published in Surrey Now-Leader interesting regarding my dataset because it showcases how the demand for eBooks and eAudiobooks is continually rising with a substantial jump in the last year alone.

This article talks about how Surrey Libraries have added a new feature called "Skip the Line" to the library apps Libby and Overdrive to help readers access books sooner and for a shorter amount of time to keep up with high demands. Amy Ashmore, the manager of collections services with Surrey Libraries, mentions how in the last year, Surrey Libraries have seen a 28.5% increase in eBooks and eAudiobooks, but she doesn't mention how that data was collected. 

Though I find the discussion of data in this article helpful to understanding the scale of the increase in eBooks and eAudiobooks, I think a visual representation of the growth over the years would be more useful. 

JRNL 3165: Data Update 1

 1. What dataset will you use for your final report? (title of your dataset, include a link to it and claim it at the URL above). 

The dataset that I'm using is BC Public Libraries Statistics 2002-Present from the government of BC Data Catalogue. 

2. Describe the dataset. What kind of data does it contain? 

With data compiled from 2002 to 2020, this dataset includes a myriad of information about public libraries within British Columbia. Because there is so much data on public libraries, I am going to focus on the top ten largest libraries, which include:

• Fraser Valley Regional Library
• Vancouver Public Library
• Surrey Public Library
• Vancouver Island Regional Library
• Okanagan Regional Library
• Greater Victoria Public Library
• Burnaby Public Library
• Richmond Public Library
• Coquitlam Public Library 

The data included is as follows:

• Library System  
• Interlibrary Loan - Lending
• Interlibrary Loan - Borrowing  
• Core Branch Data  
• Branch Facilities Ownership  
• Branch Facilities Space/Size  
• Branch Facilities Capacity  
• Branch Facilities Open Times  
• Branch Visits  
• Branch Facilities Technology  
• Core Input Data  
• Core System & Facilities  
• Core Registrations  
• eResource Data  
• Core Collections  
• Core Circulation  
• Core Visits  
• Core Programming  
• Core Staffing  
• Revenue  
• Supplemental Branch Data  
•  Branch Curbside Service  
•  Supplemental System Data  
• Supplemental System & Facilities  
• Supplemental Registrations
• Supplemental Collections  
• Supplemental Circulation  
• Supplemental Programming  
• Supplemental Staffing  
• Expenditure
• Expenditure - Electronic Resources  
• Expenditure Subtotals  

*the topics that are italicized are the ones I currently have left in my dataset.

3. Is there anything about your data that you don't understand? (i.e. what a column heading means). How will you find this out? 

There are a few header subjects that I am uncertain of, for example, I am not sure what the Grant Population means, but the website offers an excel sheet with detailed information about the questions asked on the 2021 Annual Survey of BC Public Libraries, which I suspect will help me understand some of the information I have questions about. For example, under Grant Population, it says: "Service population used by the Province to calculate annual per Capita Operating grants for public libraries."

What I like the most about them offering this information is that it gives me an overview of the information included in the dataset so that I can try to narrow down my focus. 

4. What are some questions you hope to answer with your data? List at least three. (you don't need the answers at this point)

Trying to narrow down the data that I want to use in my report is proving to be tricky and it may take more time. I know that I have decided to focus only on 2020, and so far, I have only kept the data that is italicized under question #2. 

The main question that drew me to this dataset was what percentage of residents use library services in each municipality. 

But, looking at the dataset, I realize I have a few directions that I could go. First, I am considering comparing the percentage of residents using the library services data with the data from the previous five years, but for this, I worry about having an influx of data. Secondly, I could compare the percentage of residents using the services between each municipality based on their separate populations. Another curiously I have is within the Core Staffing column, particularly the demographics of library staff. I also find myself curious about Children registered in the provincial summer reading club and comparing that to literacy levels in each municipality. 

Racial/Ethnic Categories in the U.S. Census - Data Visualization Analysis

Source: Mona Chalabi/Instagram

Mona Chalabi's chart on Racial/Ethnic Categories in the U.S. Census drew me in because I have been researching the lack of data on people from multiple backgrounds in Canada and find it interesting how little data we have compared to the United States. I am aware of how tricky this data can be to quantify and thus understand why there is a lack of data. Still, the main point of the census is to count the population and allot resources such as housing, education, health care services and determine where government money goes and the programs they fund. When given a binary choice on the census, many citizens lose out because of the lack of data. 

I find this data visualization quite paradoxical because it is both simple and complex. When looking at Chalabi's illustration, we can see she has labelled the x-axis as years and the y-axis by racial/ethnic categories using coloured folders to symbolize those categories. The more folders there are in a given year, the more racial/ethnic categories were found on the census. Speaking to the simplicity of this visualization, I prefer bar graphs because they are relatively straightforward to read, you can change data sets without affecting the others, and they don't feel too cluttered.

I would prefer this to be an interactive bar graph so that we could click through to more details in each category. While the visualization is straightforward in showing how racial/ethnic categories have changed on the census over the years, it fails to provide details about each ethnic category and time frame and might leave an unknown audience incognizant to the importance of how the census may categorize race/ethnicity. For example, I find it interesting that the Hispanic category was missing from 1960 to 1990, but I had to go out of my way to research why it wasn't there. Again, the complexity of tracking racial/ethnic data makes it difficult for us to navigate this issue, but I think there is a better way than what they've been doing.

While I think that at first glance, Chalabi's visualization does a good job at explaining how the categories changed over the years, it isn't as detailed as some of her other visualizations on the topic, such as her article WEB Du Bois: retracing his attempt to challenge racism with data in The Guardian. Given that it is an Instagram post, I understand that she was limited to an image with a short word count, but I would have liked to have seen a more in-depth article on her findings. Chalabi does link this visualization to an episode from her podcast Am I Normal? where she speaks to British Iraqi drag queen Amrou Al-Kadhi about navigating the contradictions of having multiple identities and what it means to not include more racial/ethnic categories on the census. Overall, I enjoyed Chalabi's creative take on data visualization.