would first request a download of the primary image file for an item and then if desired would have the option of also downloading the secondary image file in order to obtain further information about that particular item all data files and images files are held in the active ram memory or off loaded to the local hard drive of the client pc so that they may be reviewed and compared by the operator as desired without further communication activities in client pcs having multi tasking capabilities the downloading process may continue as a background task while the operator examines the material that has already been received and as necessary decrypted as a foreground task in this way the operator need not wait until all of the data has been downloaded before beginning the examination of the materials transmitted in a typical search the client will request items meeting specific criteria which are then identified by the database file server 30 based on the sorted list of items provided by the database file server the client then may request selected images to be downloaded from the image file server or descriptive information to be downloaded from the relational database or both if the fist has a small number of items the user may choose to view all of them in some sequential manner but if the number of items is large the user will instead be prompted to select the item.