Access 97 or 2000 Security at the Record

Initiate security at the record level. I would like to assign only a group of records to each User. Each record contains a Department Number. Only certain Users or groups of Users can access all or some of the departments throughout the entire application based on their Login Name. I expect to add code to all queries that will pass through a function that checks the table for the appropriate departments to filter. Is there an easier way.