1. A data acquisition and perusal system, comprising: a database selection module that enables selection of a plurality of files including HTML files for inclusion into at least one selectable database; a link module that enables custom links to be defined between selected terms of selected files of the at least one database; a database index generator module that enables generation of a searchable index of the data contained in the at least one selectable databases including the custom links, the generator module enabling only valid custom links to be added to the searchable index; wherein the searchable index stores the word locations of words in the database including word locations of words in the HTML files that can be used to identify and highlight words in HTML files when those files are displayed in HTML format: and a search module that enables a search of the searchable index to be performed according to a search criterion.