The electronic publishing, storage and distribution of documents is growing increasingly important and will have profound implications for our economy, culture and society. The multimedia digitalisation of libraries and the distribution of the contents of museums is revolutionising these organisations and will make these resources available to a much wider audience than was previously possible.The main goal of our MEDIA project (Mobile Electronic Documents with Interacting Agents) is the development of a system for the archival, retrieval, and distribution of electronic documents. For this purpose, a mobile agent platform is used to securely distribute these documents. Information is accessed by a search mechanism that allows the retrieval of text and images according to their content.An important feature of the system is a digital watermarking tool which embeds hidden signatures in images. This provides copyright protection and helps to ensure that the image will not be copied and sold and without proper authorisation.The management of the database of documents and images is accomplished by an extensible object relational database management system. In addition, documents and data can be accessed through the World Wide Web network.