By James Lerman

Scarecrow Education pound;24.95

Only those people who are above the middle of the nerd index will be sniffy about the concept of a printed list of websites. Most us will be grateful for this demonstration of the obvious convenience of being able to see eight or so sites briefly described on a double-page opening, then flick over (0.735 of a second) to see another eight. And, yes, we know websites come and go - but we’re adult enough to accept that, too.

This list is astonishingly helpful. Unless you’re a more sophisticated Googler than most, you’re unlikely to come across many of the sites on a random search. For example, the excellent Indigenous Peoples Literature site (www.indigenouspeople.netipl_final. html), with lots of art, poetry and stories from around the world, might be difficult to find in a trawl for folk tales unless you thought to include “indigenous” in the search.

It’s an American book, and a high proportion of the sites are based in the United States; a shame, maybe, given that this is the worldwide web.

A big bonus, though, is that you get the book on CD-Rom, too, which not only makes the index easy to search, but also means you don’t have to type in the web addresses, which are sometimes long and complicated.