9  Installing External Libraries

There may be times when you need to perform a specific task that is not available in the base R language.

This is where external libraries come in. External libraries are additional sets of functions and tools that extend the capabilities of R.

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• To install an external library (also called package) you simply need the command

• install.packages(NAME of LIBRARY)

For instance, let’s install two central R libraries: tidyverse and haven

• tidyverse is an ecosystem of packages for data manipulation and visualization.
• haven is a package in the tidyverse that provides R with the ability to read and write SPSS, Stata, and SAS files.

install.packages(tidyverse)
install.packages(haven)

Once installed you need to load the library with

library(tidyverse)
library(haven)

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You can also use R menu, which can be found at the top of the RStudio interface.

Tools > Install Packages