Technological tools a mixed blessing.

E-mail, list-servers, chat groups, on-line archives, and databases are among the electronic tools changing the face of communication. As historians incorporate this expanding technology into their work, they are finding a mixed bag of pros and cons.

At The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, history professors are using personal computers to speed up and enhance their research, discourse with distant colleagues, and, most dramatically, teaching. Yet, even as they enjoy this boon, they have concerns about the future. Will e-mail spell the end of the paper trail historians traditionally have been so dependent upon? Or will chat rooms and other forms of electronic communications give future historians a window into the thoughts of ordinary people -- a window that largely has been closed by telephones? "If these chat rooms are saved and if they're archived somehow, then historians might actually have more to work with than they do now in the telephone age," explains William Blair, assistant professor of history.

Blair's work focuses on the Civil War, a period during which letters to and from soldiers told personal stories that have been invaluable to historians. While most people stopped writing when telephones became the preferred mode of communication, many are starting again as their personal computers draw them into expanding electronic communities.

The key question is whether all this electronic communication s being saved. Much of it, unfortunately for historians, is not. "Typically, people don't keep an e-mail record," notes William A. Link, professor of history and an associate dean of The College of Arts and Sciences. "A lot of...