Searching the LISTSERV-archives seems to be a very time-consuming business. If one knows nothing on the existance or location of appropriate lists, the first search should be a LIST GLOBAL STRING command to LISTSERV. Then you get (hopefully) some hits. The next step should be a REVIEW command. After you got the LIST descriptions you can select a node having archieves (Notebook=Yes) of the list. Then you can make a LDBASE connection to that node and start searching. Hopefully you are allowed to search the archives. Wouldn't it be much easier to select the accessible databases in the first command? E.g.: TELL LISTSERV AT somenode LIST GLOBAL DB_ACCESS=YES STRING In this way you discard all the lists that have not archive and the archives that are not accessible by you. The same could be valid for sending to a list and subscription. TELL LISTSERV AT somenode LIST GLOBAL LIST_SEND=YES STRING TELL LISTSERV AT somenode LIST GLOBAL LIST_SUBSCR=YES STRING Any comments? Marc de Lyon