DIRA2 (Distributed Information Retrieval from Astronomical files) is an ongoing project to manage data from astronomical catalogs being carried out by the ASTRONET Database Working Group in Bologna, Italy. The DIRA2 database contains about 150 original catalogs (about 1 Gb of data) of Galactic and extragalactic data written in a standardized DIRA-specific ASCII format. Several of these catalogs are not available from the NASA-ADC or CDS data centers. Access to DIRA2 is via telnet to bodira.bo.cnr.it (137.204.51.8) or via DECNet by SET HOST BODIRA (37927). Login as user dira2 with password dira2. Then type dira2 again to invoke the software. Choose DB_INFO and then type LIST to see which catalogs are available. The command WHERE indicates in which directory they are stored, in case a direct DECNet or FTP copy is preferred (which must be executed from outside the DIRA environment). The output of the searches are ASCII files that can be used in other application programs. Catalogs can also be read or written in the FITS table format. A VT100 terminal emulator is needed for standard searches, and a graphics terminal emulator (Tek4010, VT125) for the graphics tasks. The latter allows one to plot objects in an area of sky taken from various catalogs onto the screen with various symbols of the user's choice. Sorting, as well as selecting and cross-identification of objects from different catalogs is possible. Unix versions for Dec-Ultrix and Alpha OSF/1 are now available and SUN-OS versions are in progress. A reduced version for personal computers (``PC-DIRA'') is also available, but lacks many of the graphical routines. During 1993 DIRA2 supported about 1500 remote logins, 40%of these from outside Italy. For the DIRA2 manual as well as for more information, contact Mauro Nanni (nanni@astbo1.bo.cnr.it, ASTBO1::NANNI) at the Istituto di Radioastronomia in Bologna, Italy. [References: Benacchio (1991), Benacchio and Nanni (1992), Nanni (1992), Benacchio (1994), Nanni and Tinarelli (1993).]