Abstract: Briefly, the present invention provides electronic methods and apparatus for storing and organizing access restricted multimedia objects. This is accomplished using semantic networks by interactively defining a semantic network, identifying a relationship between nodes by associating a label with each semantic link, attaching multimedia objects to nodes and restricting user access to multimedia objects and/or the semantic network. The method allows users to access and edit the semantic network in a Java-based platform-independent software environment. The present invention further provides a method for multiple users to collaboratively store and organize multimedia objects by providing a shared view via a network while defining the semantic network, identifying the relationship between nodes, and attaching multimedia objects to nodes.