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The authors generated data visualizations to compare sections of the library book collection, expenditures in those areas, student enrollment in majors and minors, and number of courses. The visualizations resulting from the entered data provide an excellent starting point for conversations about possible imbalances in the collection and point to areas that are either more developed or less developed than is needed to support the major and minor areas of study at the university. The methodology used should offer a template to follow for others wishing to examine their collection and may prove valuable for adjusting expenditures, suggesting service opportunities or for marketing pieces of the collection that had been hidden before graphical analysis.athering and displaying data in visual representations helps inform the brain faster and more effectively than reading textual lines of information. "One picture is worth a thousand words" is the cliché we use to describe this phenomenon. The classic works of both Edward Tufte and of Information Science professor and scientist Katy Börner provide beautiful examples of what excellent design principles applied to information and data may graphically reveal.Visualizations provide "overviews about general patterns and trends" and allow discovery of "hidden structures." 1 Edward Tufte, professor emeritus of Yale University and a well-known advocate and creator of elegant graphical display of complex data, explains that "graphics reveal data." Tufte asserts that the most "effective way to describe, explore, and summarize a set of numbers is to look at pictures of those numbers."

The authors generated data visualizations to compare sections of the library book collection, expenditures in those areas, student enrollment in majors and minors, and number of courses. The visualizations resulting from the entered data provide an excellent starting point for conversations about possible imbalances in the collection and point to areas that are either more developed or less developed than is needed to support the major and minor areas of study at the university. The methodology used should offer a template to follow for others wishing to examine their collection and may prove valuable for adjusting expenditures, suggesting service opportunities or for marketing pieces of the collection that had been hidden before graphical analysis. athering and displaying data in visual representations helps inform the brain faster and more effectively than reading textual lines of information. "One picture is worth a thousand words" is the cliché we use to describe this phenomenon. The classic works of both Edward Tufte and of Information Science professor and scientist Katy Börner provide beautiful examples of what excellent design principles applied to information and data may graphically reveal. Visualizations provide "overviews about general patterns and trends" and allow discovery of "hidden structures." 1 Edward Tufte, professor emeritus of Yale University and a well-known advocate and creator of elegant graphical display of complex data, explains that "graphics reveal data." Tufte asserts that the most "effective way to describe, explore, and summarize a set of numbers is to look at pictures of those numbers." 2 Used in libraries, information gathered into graphical impressions can reveal patterns hidden in lines of text. Xu et al. remind us that, "[i]n the context of large-scale and heterogeneous collections, the different layers of information cannot be easily comprehended if presented linearly and sequentially, and there is a risk of getting buried in details or lost in generalities." 3

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