The wide variety of reference sources include not only books and journals, but also annual reports, directories, statistics, unpublished documents, computerized data bases, authors, and organizations active in the field. Special attention is paid to sources providing information on the impact of Middle-Eastern oil-generated investment on the major economies of the Western world.

The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500, the second part of David Nicholas's ambitious two-volume study of cities and city life in the Middle Ages, fully lives up to its splendid precursor, The Growth of the Medieval City. (Like that volume it is fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use the two as a continuum.) This book covers a much shorter period than the first. That traced the rise of the medieval European city system from late Antiquity to the early fourteenth century; this offers a portrait of the fully developed late medieval city in all its richness and complexity. David Nicholas begins with the economic and demographic realignments of the last two medieval centuries. These fostered urban growth, raising living standards and increasing demand for a growing range of urban manufactures. The hunger for imports and a shortage of coin led to sophisticated credit mechanisms that could only function through large cities. But, if these changes brought new opportunities to the wealthy, they also created a growing problem of urban poverty: violence became endemic in the later medieval city. Moreover, although more rebellions were sparked by taxes than by class conflict, class divisions were deepening. Most cities came to be governed by councils chosen from guild-members, and most guilds were dominated by merchants. The landowning elite that had dominated the early medieval cities of the first volume still retained its prestige, but its wealth was outstripped by the richer merchants; while craftsmen, who had little political influence, were further disadvantaged as access to the guilds became more restricted. The later medieval cities developed permanent bureaucracies providing a huge range of public services, and they were paid for by sophisticated systems of taxation and public borrowing. The survival of their fuller, richer records allow us not only to apply a more statistical approach, but also to get much closer, to the splendours and squalors of everyday city-life than was possible in the earlier volume. The book concludes with a set of vibrant chapters on women and children and religious minorities in the city, on education and culture, and on the tenor of ordinary urban existence. Like its predecessor, this book is massively, and vividly, documented. Its approach is interdisciplinary and comparative, and its examples and case studies are drawn from across Europe: from France, England, Germany, the Low Countries, Iberia and Italy, with briefer reviews of the urban experience elsewhere from Baltic to Balkans. The result is the most wide-ranging and up-to-date study of its multifaceted subject. It is a formidable achievement.

This unique book draws on research that constituted the first major nationwide evaluation of the use and impact of key digital health information platforms which were provided to thousands of health consumers in the UK. The authors offer the first comprehensive and detailed comparison of usage and impact of the three major ICT platforms delivering health information - the internet, touch-screen kiosks and digital interactive television. It provides an extensive reference source on how health consumers behave when online, whether this differs according to digital platform or type of user, how users perceive digital health services and what health benefits these services deliver. The book will be invaluable reading for all those interested in digital health information - students, academics, health policy-makers and information managers.

Aiming at ensuring that everyone obtains the rich rewards available in today's information-centred society, this book seeks to provide a systematic method for the understanding, appreciation and evaluation of information needs, which alone can guarantee the value of information to the consumer. Based on the insights gained from research projects involving hundreds of thousands of people, it sets out to provide a framework, firmly grounded in theory but nevertheless highly practical, for information needs analysis. The book is written both for librarians, publishers, archivists, records managers, journalists and other information professionals, to help them in their efforts to design improved systems and monitor the effectiveness of their services on an ongoing basis, and for individual information consumers, to enable them better to meet their own information needs in the expanding sphere of virtual information.

Cradle of northern Europe's later urban and industrial pre-eminence, medieval Flanders was a region of immense political and economic importance -- and already, as so often later, the battleground of foreign powers. Yet this book is, remarkably, the first comprehensive modern history of the region. Within the framework of a clear political narrative, it presents a vivid portrait of medieval Flemish life that will be essential reading for the medievalist -- and a boon for the many visitors to Bruges and Ghent eager for a better understanding of what they see.

Drawing conceptually and directly on music notation, this book investigates landscape architecture's inherent temporality. It argues that the rich history of notating time in music provides a critical model for this under-researched and under-theorised aspect of landscape architecture, while also ennobling sound in the sensory appreciation of landscape. A Musicology for Landscape makes available to a wider landscape architecture and urban design audience the works of three influential composers - Morton Feldman, Gyoergy Ligeti and Michael Finnissy - presenting a critical evaluation of their work within music, as well as a means in which it might be used in design research. Each of the musical scores is juxtaposed with design representations by Kevin Appleyard, Bernard Tschumi and William Kent, before the author examines four landscape spaces through the development of new landscape architectural notations. In doing so, this work offers valuable insights into the methods used by landscape architects for the benefit of musicians, and by bringing together musical composition and landscape architecture through notation, it affords a focused and sensitive exploration of temporality and sound in both fields.

Drawing conceptually and directly on music notation, this book investigates landscape architecture's inherent temporality. It argues that the rich history of notating time in music provides a critical model for this under-researched and under-theorised aspect of landscape architecture, while also ennobling sound in the sensory appreciation of landscape. A Musicology for Landscape makes available to a wider landscape architecture and urban design audience the works of three influential composers - Morton Feldman, Gyoergy Ligeti and Michael Finnissy - presenting a critical evaluation of their work within music, as well as a means in which it might be used in design research. Each of the musical scores is juxtaposed with design representations by Kevin Appleyard, Bernard Tschumi and William Kent, before the author examines four landscape spaces through the development of new landscape architectural notations. In doing so, this work offers valuable insights into the methods used by landscape architects for the benefit of musicians, and by bringing together musical composition and landscape architecture through notation, it affords a focused and sensitive exploration of temporality and sound in both fields.

The Later Medieval City, 1300-1500, the second part of David Nicholas's ambitious two-volume study of cities and city life in the Middle Ages, fully lives up to its splendid precursor, The Growth of the Medieval City. (Like that volume it is fully self-sufficient, though many readers will want to use the two as a continuum.) This book covers a much shorter period than the first. That traced the rise of the medieval European city system from late Antiquity to the early fourteenth century; this offers a portrait of the fully developed late medieval city in all its richness and complexity. David Nicholas begins with the economic and demographic realignments of the last two medieval centuries. These fostered urban growth, raising living standards and increasing demand for a growing range of urban manufactures. The hunger for imports and a shortage of coin led to sophisticated credit mechanisms that could only function through large cities. But, if these changes brought new opportunities to the wealthy, they also created a growing problem of urban poverty: violence became endemic in the later medieval city. Moreover, although more rebellions were sparked by taxes than by class conflict, class divisions were deepening. Most cities came to be governed by councils chosen from guild-members, and most guilds were dominated by merchants. The landowning elite that had dominated the early medieval cities of the first volume still retained its prestige, but its wealth was outstripped by the richer merchants; while craftsmen, who had little political influence, were further disadvantaged as access to the guilds became more restricted. The later medieval cities developed permanent bureaucracies providing a huge range of public services, and they were paid for by sophisticated systems of taxation and public borrowing. The survival of their fuller, richer records allow us not only to apply a more statistical approach, but also to get much closer, to the splendours and squalors of everyday city-life than was possible in the earlier volume. The book concludes with a set of vibrant chapters on women and children and religious minorities in the city, on education and culture, and on the tenor of ordinary urban existence. Like its predecessor, this book is massively, and vividly, documented. Its approach is interdisciplinary and comparative, and its examples and case studies are drawn from across Europe: from France, England, Germany, the Low Countries, Iberia and Italy, with briefer reviews of the urban experience elsewhere from Baltic to Balkans. The result is the most wide-ranging and up-to-date study of its multifaceted subject. It is a formidable achievement.

This unique book draws on research that constituted the first major nationwide evaluation of the use and impact of key digital health information platforms which were provided to thousands of health consumers in the UK. The authors offer the first comprehensive and detailed comparison of usage and impact of the three major ICT platforms delivering health information - the internet, touch-screen kiosks and digital interactive television. It provides an extensive reference source on how health consumers behave when online, whether this differs according to digital platform or type of user, how users perceive digital health services and what health benefits these services deliver. The book will be invaluable reading for all those interested in digital health information - students, academics, health policy-makers and information managers.

Flanders, best known for its large cities and export-grade woollen cloth, is the setting for these articles. Professor Nicholas here emphasises the region's broader importance in the economy of medieval Europe as a focus of demand for grain and industrial raw materials. Imports to supply the bloated internal markets were more important in establishing the Flemish cities and creating the capital base of their elites than were cloth exports, which by the 14th century were being undercut by competitors from England and Brabant. The second part of the book looks at the turbulent domestic politics of the Flemish cities, conditioned by a network of nuclear and extended families whose personal antagonisms and heightened consciousness of honour led to decimating vendettas of a severity once associated mainly with Italy. It also examines the mix of urban and rural interests that characterised the elite, showing for instance that the famous van Arteveldes were as noteworthy in the swamps of northeastern Flanders as in the streets of Ghent.

Aiming at ensuring that everyone obtains the rich rewards available in today's information-centred society, this book seeks to provide a systematic method for the understanding, appreciation and evaluation of information needs, which alone can guarantee the value of information to the consumer. Based on the insights gained from research projects involving hundreds of thousands of people, it sets out to provide a framework, firmly grounded in theory but nevertheless highly practical, for information needs analysis. The book is written both for librarians, publishers, archivists, records managers, journalists and other information professionals, to help them in their efforts to design improved systems and monitor the effectiveness of their services on an ongoing basis, and for individual information consumers, to enable them better to meet their own information needs in the expanding sphere of virtual information.

Comparative Perspectives on History and Historians: Essays in Memory of Bryce Lyon (1920-2007) features a section of appreciations of Bryce Lyon from the three editors, R. C. Van Caenegem, and Walter Prevenier, followed by three sections on the major areas on which Lyon's research concentrated: the legacy of Henri Pirenne, constitutional and legal history of England and the Continent, and the economic history of the Low Countries. Original essays by Bernard S. Bachrach, David S. Bachrach, Jan Dumolyn, Caroline Dunn, Jelle Haemers, John H. A. Munro, James M. Murray, Anthony Musson, David Nicholas, W. Mark Ormrod, Walter Prevenier, Jeff Rider, Don C. Skemer, and Marci Sortor deepen our understanding of Lyon's career and significance and further our knowledge of the areas in which he worked.

The breadth of articles contained in this volume reflects the breadth of Bryce Lyon's scholarly interests. Topics include marriage rules as they relate to women and incest, Bernard of Clairvaux, Henry I, and executions in late medieval Paris. This collection honors Bryce Lyon and his considerable impact on medieval studies as a whole.

Except for a thin slice of territory south of the Yser River, Belgium was entirely occupied by the Germans from October 15, 1914 until the end of the First World War. The suffering of the Belgian people, which made such a vivid impression on Americans, British, Canadians, and Australians at the time, has been largely forgotten. The invasion was accompanied by mass executions and wholesale arson; nearly 6,000 civilians were killed. Over 2 million Belgians escaped to the Netherlands, France, and Britain. When order was restored, the nation faced a grave economic crisis. A major exporter and among the most prosperous countries in Europe, Belgium was now cut off from its supplies of raw material and its markets, and subject to heavy war taxes, fines, and requisitions. As Germany began increasingly to feel the effects of the Allied blockade, the temptation grew to exploit to the hilt all Belgian resources, including labor. With eloquence and passion, the eminent medievalist Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) describes the hunger, the deprivations, the unemployment, the arbitrary arrests and deportations, the indignities of home invasions and confiscations, the censorship, the conscription of workers, the dismantling and destruction of Belgian factories, and the administrative division of the country. Belgium and the First World War comprehensively surveys the catastrophe and chronicles the stoicism and the resiliency with which Belgians responded.

Reflecting the vigor of both urban and medieval history, this timely textbook from an established scholar in urban studies is a broadly interdisciplinary work that breaks new ground by emphasizing the links between the late medieval and early modern cities. Adopting an organic, environmental approach, David Nicholas examines the common social, governmental, economic and intellectual roles played by most pre-modern cities.

This work tackles one of the fundamental problems of information management - how to get the right information to the right person at the right time. It provides a practical framework to enable information services to gather information from users in order to aid information system design, and to monitor the effectiveness of an information service. This new edition has been fully revised and now has increased coverage of the Internet. The Web raises many problems when it comes to meeting information needs - authority and overload, for example - and these problems make an effective information needs analysis even more crucial. There is a new methodology section on Web log analysis and focus group interviews. Practical advice is given concerning interview technique and an interview schedule is included.