Introduction 69 Hypermedia Systems in the New Millennium Bob Waite IBM Corporation rwaite@ us.ibm.corn Frank Halasz, "Seven Issues" Each August, the ACM Journal of Computer Documentation repnnts a classic article, book chapter, or report along with several analytical commentaries and a response by the author of the classic document. In this context, a "classic" document means one that was published at least five years ago but is no longer in print. It also means one that raises issues of lasting importance to the profession. Cathy Marshall examines three themes: the heterogenous nature of hypertext, its uses, and its users; the importance of hypertext readers and their tools; and the tension between formal structures and informal practices. Her first point is that, although the creators of early hypertext systems assumed that those systems would be used by researchers and academics for intellectual purposes, the Web is instead used by a diverse spectrum of users for a wide variety of purposes. Her second point is that hypertext readers perform fundamentally different tasks from hypertext writers, including personal annotation, re-retrieval, gathering, contextual access, and collaborative reading. Marshall's third point is that hypertext users ignore or reject formal structures such as typed
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