1. A method for a user of a computer system to traverse a hypertext database to retrieve an electronic document stored in the hypertext database, the method comprising the steps of: (A) storing in the hypertext database a plurality of hypertext nodes, each of the hypertext nodes corresponding to an electronic document, wherein each of the hypertext nodes may be selectively linked to another of said hypertext nodes; (B) storing an index in association with the hypertext database, the index comprising a plurality of descriptive index terms, in which each of the descriptive index terms is assigned to one of the electronic documents; (C) receiving a weighted relevancy ranking of each descriptive index term; (D) receiving a set of relevant index term values; (E) comparing the set of relevant index term values with sets of the descriptive index terms using the weighted relevancy ranking and the set of relevant index term values; (F) producing a list of electronic documents based on the comparing step (E), in which the list is ranked in accordance with the relevancy of each document with respect to the user based on the weighted relevancy ranking and in which each document in the list contains at least one of the relevant index term values.
1. A method for a user of a computer system to traverse a hypertext database to retrieve an electronic document stored in the hypertext database, the method comprising the steps of: (A) storing in the hypertext database a plurality of hypertext nodes, each of the hypertext nodes corresponding to an electronic document, wherein each of the hypertext nodes may be selectively linked to another of said hypertext nodes; (B) storing an index in association with the hypertext database, the index comprising a plurality of descriptive index terms, in which each of the descriptive index terms is assigned to one of the electronic documents; (C) receiving a weighted relevancy ranking of each descriptive index term; (D) receiving a set of relevant index term values; (E) comparing the set of relevant index term values with sets of the descriptive index terms using the weighted relevancy ranking and the set of relevant index term values; (F) producing a list of electronic documents based on the comparing step (E), in which the list is ranked in accordance with the relevancy of each document with respect to the user based on the weighted relevancy ranking and in which each document in the list contains at least one of the relevant index term values. 5. The method recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of linking each electronic document in the hypertext database to a present position of the user in the hypertext database by an intermediate, dynamically generated tree link.