I think Jill Tatem has leaped, and intriguingly so,
very far (or perhaps not so far) into the future. The
quotation from the article in Internet World reminds me
of the television commercial (which I have not seen lately)
in which Norfolk and Western used some not-terribly-fancy
computer graphics (including a running horse) to promote
a railroad (what the Tofflers might call Third Wave
media
to promote a Second Wave product). There is something
jarring about it. If the quotation from the article is
even close to predicting the future, then advertising
on the Internet will be literally interactive: the user
will be moving inside a prospective vehicle, moving within
a prospective landscape, and similarly in a host of other
areas.
 
        Is the lesson then that commiting finding aids to
WWW, at least in the former's present form, is akin to
using an electronic medium for essentially a paper-,
print-, and linear-oriented document? How about some
hypertextual finding aids? Interactive finding aids?
Moving pictures? Still photos? Computer graphics to
give the user the feel and atmosphere of your search
room? (Of course, perhaps no one will need a search
room in the future....)
 
        This may sound a bit wooly, and perhaps my rushed
message is, but this sort of scenario is not as far away
as some of us think.
 
Ed Southern
[log in to unmask]
N.C. Division of Archives and History
(Opinions expressed in this message may not
   represent the policy of my agency.)