Drupal modules for displaying data « Digital Humanities Questions & Answers

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Drupal modules for displaying data

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Asked 5 years ago by Miriam Posner
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Miriam Posner
Member
So I know someone (I swear, it's not me) who has collected a bunch of data from a bunch of survey respondents in a bunch of formats: PDF, Word docs, spreadsheets. Some of it is quantitative, some of it is narrative. There's about 150 pages of it. So kind of not a best-case scenario.

What he'd like to do is display this (anonymized) data on a website for the benefit of the community from which it was collected. He's already obtained consent. He'd like to be able to display the data by anonymized "person" (i.e., by profile), but also allow for the possibility of some rudimentary analysis or visualization (e.g., how many of these respondents are female? how many are both female and of this ethnicity?)

My hunch is that he's best off using Drupal + CCK + Views. I have warned him that he has a lot of data-entry and a steep learning curve ahead of him. Important caveat: he does not know any programming languages.

So my questions are these:

• Do you agree that Drupal is his best option?
• If Drupal is the way to go, are there modules that make sense for collecting, displaying, and visualizing this kind of information?
• Can you recommend particularly good books or other resources for this use of Drupal?

Thank you, as always.
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Posted 5 years ago Permalink
Kaia
Member

Yes, Drupal is probably a good option, if not the best. I'd suggest looking at the Exhibits module, as well as some of the chart/graph/etc module options. From the sounds of it, the learning curve with Drupal 7 should be less steep than with 6, so he may want to start by looking for modules that would help, and evaluate what the likelihood is they'll be ready for Drupal 7 within an acceptable length of time. CCK and Views should be ready to go quickly, but others are questionable.

Depending on how complex the data is (and how complex the resulting website needs to be), there may be some much simpler options with Google Spreadsheets and various charting and api options.

Posted 5 years ago Permalink
Patrick Murray-John

That definitely sounds like a Drupal + CCK + Views task. A lot of CCK, and a lot of views.

I'm hoping that even though there are all those different media, that the data in them is roughly the same. If it's structured fairly well, that'd be the guide to building content types with CCK.

The analysis is the trickier part, since that where you'd need some complex views, and depending on what you want some complex fields in CCK (i.e., not neccesarily just text fields.)

As far as modules go, I'd actually suggest starting just with getting the data relationships down with CCK + Views. I'm guessing that further visualizations would depend on that core data, no matter what.

Books? alas, I'm not sure, partly because the info architecture part is just as important -- maybe more so -- than the how-to of using Drupal.

Hope that helps,
Patrick

Posted 5 years ago Permalink
Joe Gilbert
Admin

Replying to @Miriam Posner's post:

I might try Google Fusion Tables, which generates a variety of charting/mapping views for tabular data. Given that you have a lot of narrative information as well, I would sign up for a WordPress account (or install the software) then embed some of the Google Fusion visualizations either alongside your texts or on separate pages.

Posted 5 years ago Permalink
Miriam Posner
Member

Just a note to say thanks very much! I'm glad to know that I'm not way off base in thinking of Drupal. Patrick, your point is well-taken about constructing architecture and relationships carefully. I've also never heard of the Exhibits module, nor have I heard of Google Fusion Tables. Joe, you might be on to something when you suggest integrating these visualizations with WordPress-based narratives. I'll present both options to the researcher and see which makes more sense to him.

Posted 5 years ago Permalink
Miriam Posner
Member
Best Answer

Replying to @Miriam Posner's post:

A follow-up for those of you who are insanely curious: I presented both options to the researcher, and he felt that Drupal was the best match for him. He was undaunted by the learning curve and tells me he's having fun learning with Lynda.com videos, Drupal, and MAMP. So a happy ending, thanks to you!

Posted 5 years ago Permalink

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