"7 Things You Should Know About " are famous series created by the he EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) that provide concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each article from the series focuses in brief on a single technology and describes what it is, how it works and where it is going. The series are wonderful source of basic information on emerging technologies that every librarian should be familiar with.
The latest from the series focuses on Data Visualization. Beyond graphical representation of information, data visualization helps researchers "discover relationships between data not previously considered important".
In my opinion data visualization is just starting. As the web evolves and billions and billions of documents become available online, data visualization, might be the only way to quickly and efficiently represent huge amounts of data.
Via: The Kept-Up Academic Librarian
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7030.pdf