I followed up on your suggestion. When you browse for a gis file, the tree of accessible mapsets and files starts off with the current mapset expanded to show its files and others collapsed (click to expand).
Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
Arizona State University
phone: 480-965-6213
fax: 480-965-7671
www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton