Written by leading scholars at St. Gallen University in Switzerland, Electronic Mall includes Internet shopping sites, bookstores, and cultural information from the worlds of theater, art, and cinema. Content is truly free and interactive, and allows users the opportunity to use and add on to the site's content. OBS's sophisticated link editing and state-of-the-art networking technology will accommodate heavy traffic on both continents and provide hit tracking and microbilling services for participating businesses.

Sited at EUnet in Dortmund, Germany, the OBS-Europa server is a self-updating mirror of the OBS-US server in Rockport, MA. OBS-Europa will offer easy access to OBS's diverse publications by eliminating the need for Europeans to rely on the overloaded transatlantic "pipe." Purchases at OBS all still occur at the secure store on OBS's server in Rockport, where books, CDs, and clothing are featured in interactive catalogs.

"Downloading static files from one server doesn't cut it on the Internet anymore," said OBS President Laura Fillmore. "Today's electronic publishing must be truly interactive. OBS-Europa's interactivity will come from the participation of the thousands of users accessing our servers around the world and adding to their contents."

OBS-Europa will showcase Electronic Mall and other projects at Booth #11.21 at MILIA, the leading multimedia show in the world. Also featured will be John Pierson's new book from Miramax Films, Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes, which links to independent film resources in Norway, Germany and the U.S.; Miramax forums for online discussion; and weekly interactive CU-SeeMe sessions.

OBS has produced online editions of Stephen King, Nelson Mandela, and Nicholas Negroponte's bestselling books. Recently, Advertising Age noted the OBS Internet Projection of Quentin Tarantino's newest film, From Dusk Till Dawn, "may become tomorrow's Web model."