Enter your search query at www.britannica.com to check facts in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ("the oldest and largest general reference in the English language"). A search for "Greece" brought up statistical information, links to international magazine articles on Greek current events, links to websites (with content details and rated by stars) and options to refine my search to get more specific entries from the encyclopaedia.

CHECK the spelling and location of place names around the world at the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. A search for Ballaghaderreen gave its county, longitude and latitude. At: www.getty.edu/research/ tools/vocabulary/tgn/

TO check the exact words of a quotation, go to the comprehensive, easy-to-use database of general-purpose quotations at www.famous-quotations.com. Visitors can browse through quotations by subject, author, or alphabetically by quote, or use the search engine.

EUROSTATS aims to provide the latest and most complete statistical information on EU and Euro zone countries on the Web. Ever wondered about how much of Europe's 27 million tonnes of hazardous waste is produced in Ireland? Or how the price of natural gas has changed between 1998 and 2000? The database is searchable, and the site map usefully breaks info into categories such as populations and social conditions, agriculture and fisheries, and environment and energy. At: http://europa.eu.int/comm/ eurostat

Next week: useful stuff

smarriott@irish-times.ie