Garbage collector for hypermedia systems

In a hypermedia distributed computing system including a communications medium,

• a plurality of workstations coupled to said communications medium for enabling users to transfer digital textual data back and forth between said workstations,
• a file server coupled to said communications medium for storing digital non-textual data files representing human perceivable information,
• transducer means proximate certain of said workstations, said transducer means being coupled to said communications medium for enabling users to record uniquely named non-textual data files on said file server and to playback such files subject to access authorization, and
• management means coupled to said communication medium and to said file server, said management means including a database system including a database of uniquely named reference entries referring by file name and time interval to said non-textual data files, whereby users may be given selective access to selected ones and selected parts of selected ones of said non-textual data files by embedding the reference entry names corresponding thereto in textual data distributed to selected users via said communication medium;
• the improvement comprising
• a database of user registered interest entries in said database system, with each of said interest entries identifying the reference entry to which it pertains, the user responsible for registering said interest entry, and a unique user assigned reference value,
• means coupled to said database of user registered interest entries for periodically enumerating all of the registered interest entries and for deleting any interest entries found to be no longer valid,
• means coupled to said database of reference entries for periodically enumerating said reference entries and for deleting any reference entries of more than minimum age that have no interests referring to them, and
• means coupled to said file server for deleting from said file server any non-textual files that have no references referring to them, thereby reclaiming storage space occupied by obsolete files.