Intranet solutions help requested.

[Sweeting, Floyd]

We are a small private art museum and library. There are about 60 PCs
connected to a Novell 4.1 network running on a Hewlett Packard server.
The network supports a server for the library's online public access
catalog, and three Unix servers: the Cuadra Star database system, a
communications server for remote access, a firewall to protect
confidential files and we have access to a fractional T-1 (256 kb)
leased line providing Internet access. 

We are running Windows 95 and Office 97 (and still have some PCs running
Windows 3.11 and MS Office)
We use Netscape Navigator 3.0

We are planning to bring up a website (with public information) in the
summer and to have it hosted on a remote site (to protect our network
from intruders).

I want to create an Intranet and wonder why I need a server. Wouldn't a
simple series of HTML documents used as a front-end to the shared files
on the network do the trick?  Or would starting up the associated
applications each time you want to access a file be too cumbersome?

Also if I do need a server, what is my best option (cost, ease of
maintenance)? Novell, Unix,  Microsoft?

Does it make any sense to have the Intranet hosted on the remote site as
well?  

Does anyone have any ideas, experience, etc. to share?

Thanks in advance.

Floyd Sweeting
The Frick Collection