Sea Dragon: an Impressive JPG 2000 Client
Have a look at one of the Demo videos on the Seadragon site:
The Google Map-like fluidity of this application makes for a very attractive user experience. The Seadragon folks also claim that the client-side "browsing" is unaffected by low bandwidth. As the demand for visual materials grows in research and instruction, so too will the need for effective image collection browsing and searching interfaces.