An interface is provided for permitting a user to explore a collection of data. The data collection provides nodes as structural elements, and references which are assigned to nodes and hold identifiers of other nodes. Multiple references can be assigned to each node, thus guiding a user of the system to multiple other nodes, and multiple references can hold the same address, so that multiple nodes can have references pointing to the same node. Embodiments of the interface allow visualizing the network created by the interconnection of the nodes on a display region. Embodiments of the interface also allow the user to intuitively navigate along the references in both directions of the references, so that the user can explore which nodes are referenced by a certain node, and also by which nodes a certain node is referenced. Electronic documents can be assigned to each node, and embodiments of the interface allow these documents to be displayed either directly in a reserved display region of the interface, or by launching a matching application on the user's computer.