The present invention provides electronic methods and apparatus for storing and organizing access to 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- or AJAX-based platform-independent software environment. The present invention further provides a method for rating semantic networks by allowing viewers to provide feedback regarding a semantic network's value or usefulness and then calculating a rating in accordance with the received feedback. The present invention further provides a method for linking semantic networks to build a knowledge base.