Highcharts truly is a wonderful tool. However, it can be onerous to get it to accept "datetime" values but the documentation and examples are great (http://www.highcharts.com/demo/). You can theme your charts, be interactive, etc. It is all built and used via JavaScript so having a firm foundation or being comfortable to make changes in that language is a requirement.

The interactive facets of Highcharts that I appreciate the most are interactive zooming (for dense data) and the ability to click on a "series" and have the chart redrawn with only the currently selected -- automatically updating the axes if necessary and animating the transition to the new data set as well!

You can also have the data update live on a regular interval if applicable.

We decided to combine some of our top priority statistics and graphs into a single view here:
http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/dashboard/public.php

Our dashboard interface has come a long way and is powered through a fairly robust back-end of various "factories" of information and "widgets" of data to choose from.

You are welcome to take the interface as an inspiration and see the JavaScript in the source files that drive the display. Feel free to contact me with questions,

Victor Replogle
University Libraries...A destination for research, learning, and friends
Library Technologies Support Analyst
University Libraries                765.285.8032
Ball State University              765.285.2008 (fax)
Muncie, IN 47306                   [log in to unmask]
www.bsu.edu/library

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-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michel, Jason
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 13:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualization libraries for lib data

Wow. Highcharts looks to be an excellent tool.  Thanks for the tip!



Jason Paul Michel
User Experience Librarian
Miami University Libraries
513.529.3935
*[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>* @jpmichel <https://twitter.com/jpmichel>

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Joshua Welker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Definitely Highcharts. I have used it on a few projects, and it is 
> fantastic. It's free for non-commercial use. Great documentation and 
> support. It also has plugins for several web app frameworks like 
> Rails, Django, Yii, etc. Very helpful if you are going to use one of 
> those to build your dashboard.
>
> Josh Welker
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf 
> Of Kaile Zhu
> Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 11:05 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualization libraries for lib data
>
> I used google charts.  Not as fancy as D3, but easier.  You pass data 
> to the chart API and it does the heavy lifting for you.
>
> https://developers.google.com/chart/
>
> -Kelly Zhu
> Web Services Librarian
> University of Central Oklahoma
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf 
> Of Eric Phetteplace
> Sent: 2014年9月19日 9:44
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Visualization libraries for lib data
>
> I've used D3 to build charts for a similar data dashboard. It's maybe 
> a little less plug-and-play than other charting libraries but has 
> tremendous adoption, is really flexible.
>
> http://d3js.org/
>
> Best,
> Eric
>
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 7:25 AM, Michel, Jason <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > Hello all!
> >
> > We're in the process of centralizing all of our disparate data 
> > points (circ, door counts, chat ref, in-person interactions, db 
> > stats, instruction, web analytics, social analytics) into a single 
> > DB.  We then plan on building interactive visualizations on top of this data.
> >
> > What are some visualization/charting/graphing libraries that would 
> > work for this?  We have some ideas but wanted to hear what the c4l 
> > had to say about it.  Thanks in advance!
> >
> > This is what we have so far (social stats only).  We're using 
> > chart.js for
> > this:
> >
> > http://dog.lib.muohio.edu/~jpmichel/apis/stats/
> >
> >
> > Jason Paul Michel
> > User Experience Librarian
> > Miami University Libraries
> > 513.529.3935
> > *[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>* @jpmichel 
> > <https://twitter.com/jpmichel>
> >
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