4. The National Association for Managers of Student Services in Colleges: www.namss.org.uk

Users can select one of two paths: 'staff' or 'students and visitors'. Taking the student/visitor option leads to 'Distance Learning, Open & Flexible Learning'. Again a choice with the 'mainly for students' seeming the best bet. The NAMSS site does not list courses but has a small selection of links to other web sites where distance learning courses can be located. So, using the site would, for instance, allow a student to access the NEC site.

5. Globewide Network Agency: www.gnacademy.org

The Globewide Network Agency has been in existence since 1993 and is incoroporated as an educational non-profit organisation in Texas, USA. The site boasts a catalogue of 23379 courses and 1975 programmes worldwide. Users are asked to enter a search term which, when activated, repeatedly insisted on calling up another home page. The site was eventually abandoned in frustration.

6. The International Centre for Distance Learning: www-icdl.open.ac.uk

Based at the Open University, the iCDL database holds information on over 31,0000 distance learning courses worldwide. Its home page offers an 'archive of institutions and courses worldwide' and invites users to browse an institutional database geographically, by field of study classifications or key words. We chose the latter. Homoeopathy drew a blank. It was only after using a 'pre-built searches index' with broad subject areas that we stumbled across 'Homeopathy, Dip'. Beware variant spellings: they can wreak havoc in word searches. Feeding 'homeopathy' into the subject search located 8 records, each of which gave full information on the course and the institution running it.

7. The Learning Network: www.netlearn.co.uk