conditional value lists

I am trying to find a way to make a value list display only certain values from a field in the same file, depending on the contents of another field.

I have a staff database. it is related to a database published on the web, but the web browsers don't like relational value lists...so i thought of a way around it...but the trick is getting it to work.

in the web file, i want to be able to have a drop down menu of people belonging to certain departments. (i.e. in the Writer field of the web-published database, i want a drop down menu of only the staff members with "writer" in the department field from the staff database file.

the staff file contains a repeating field specifying which department each member belongs to (staff members can work in more than one department).

now, i figured if i could create the value list within the staff file, i could create a new value list in the web-published file and do 'use value list from another file' to bring it to where i want it.

my only problem is coming up with a way to create a database to include members of only one department (each department will have its own list). does anyone have any ideas?