Library Technology Reports vol. 57, no. 1 (January 2021), "Data Visualization with R for Digital Collections," by Monika Glowacka-Musial

Since the 1990s, libraries have invested in developing digital collections and online services to provide access to historical sources. One way to inspire users to actively engage with these materials is by creating visual contexts for the materials. These visuals provide an overview of a collection’s content and inspire users to experiment with the collection’s data for various purposes, including research.

This issue of Library Technology Reports (vol. 57, no. 1) presents an approach that views digital collections as data that can be mined, analyzed, and visualized by means of the R programming language. R is open source, relatively easy to learn, and supported by an established community of coders. The selection of plots presented in the report includes R scripts, fragments of data tables, and some explanation of the R code used to create the plots.