During the last few years a number of projects combining materials from archives, libraries and museums have been initiated in Denmark and Scandinavia, using different new technologies, including mind-mapping, topic maps and other similar technologies, to present material in innovative and immediately accessible ways. This paper describes and analyzes the approaches underlying the different projects and the resulting differences in user experience. This is done partly by comparing data from user feedback.

Based on a preliminary survey, the projects seem to fall into rather distinct categories: projects that present the material in "pure" form, thus leaving interpretation to the users; projects that present the material together with context, in order to make it more intelligible to users not inherently familiar with the subject matter; and projects that develop the individual information snippets into coherent narratives, thus making it interesting to a wider audience.

This paper analyses advantages and drawbacks of the specific solutions on a background of user reactions in order to glimpse a pattern in the interplay between the choices made and the groups of users that prefer each of the sites.