Is looking at a 3D presentation "reading," or what?

The NYTs has an article this morning titled "Video Projections on a Globe Make Planetary Data Click." It describes the technique of projecting images (mostly generated from satellites and telescopes) onto a large globe, six feet in diameter, for the purpose of giving presentations. Alexander MacDonald of NOAA came up with the idea in 1995 and it has been growing since then. He notes that humans are visual animals and displays in three dimensions have the capacity to summarize and exchange lots of data quickly: "people get it if they can see it."

Considering that three dimensional expressions of information (what would be a good shorthand for this?) are valuable tools for teaching, learning, and exchanging information, they are worth the attention of libraries. (The litmus test should be whether they serve our values, and I would say the answer is yes.) Further, it seems that most of these kinds of things are digital. I don't include realia, because generally realia doesn't have a temporal component and isn't necessarily representational of another thing (ie. a chair is simply a chair and not representation of, say a planetary system.)