David Nicholas - Böcker

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variety of reference sources include not only books and journals, but also annual reports, directories, statistics, unpublished documents, computerized data bases, authors, and organizations active in the field.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.

Reflecting the vigour of both urban and medieval history, this timely textbook by a leading scholar of urban studies is a broadly interdisciplinary work that breaks new ground by emphasising the links between the late medieval and early modern cities.Urban Europe, 1100-1700:- Examines the common social, governmental, economic and intellectual roles played by most pre-modern cities- Views cities as originating in local market relations, then expanding with the growing complexity of their functions into regional centres of culture, government and exchange- Adopts an organic, evolutionary and environmental approach, particularly in its application of geographical systems to early urbanisation- Makes extensive use of maps and original source material to illustrate aspects of the urban experienceDavid Nicholas' study will appeal to students and scholars of history, geography and urban studies. Sociologists and political economists will also value its demonstration of the continuing relevance of the thought of Max Weber, while urban planners will find its analysis of the rationality of pre-modern cities highly useful.

The 'Transformation of Europe' gently subverts a conventional vision of Europe that divides the world between the late-medieval and early modern periods, emphasizing the distortion involved in that construction. Important changes towards 'modernity' are evident, the book argues, as early as the fourteenth century; only in religious history does there appear to be some justification for retaining the traditional notion that 'modern age' began with Martin Luther, though even in that arena the institutional break of the Protestants with Rome cannot conceal fundamental continuity of expression and attitude. The 'transformation' of the title emphasizes gradual, if significant change in the period. Change to the political configuration and governing institutions of Europe, to the economy and to society, to the region's relations with the broader world, to the course of creative activity, and to religious attitudes. Professor Nicholas is an effective and experienced guide to the important themes and unfolding events in Europe's history from the onset of the Hundred Years war to the great confessional divide of the sixteenth century.

Information Science is concerned with the theoretical and practical aspects of effective information provision and consumption. In particular, information scientists explore the theoretical underpinnings and practical competencies involved in the generation, collection, organization, processing, management, storage, retrieval, distribution, communication, and utilization of information.In today’s knowledge societies (shaped, in the words of the editors of this new Routledge title, ‘by an unabatedly accumulating abundance of information’), it is perhaps unsurprising that Information Science is more than ever a crucial site for scholarly exploration. And as serious research in and around the discipline flourishes as never before, this four-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies series meets the urgent need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of interdisciplinary literature. Edited by two leading scholars of international repute, Information Science gathers foundational and canonical work, together with more innovative and cutting-edge scholarship.Volume I brings together the best and most influential materials to provide a wide-ranging critique of the theoretical framework and historical context of Information Science. Starting with the changing definitions, concepts, and roles of information throughout history, the major works gathered here examine the nature of Information Science as a discipline, including an exploration of its philosophy and core mission; its intellectual content and concerns; its scope and boundaries; and an appraisal of how libraries, information services, and information management evolved over the years.Volume II assembles the essential thinking on the management of information for its optimum accessibility and usability. It encompasses the entire chain of information (the process through which recorded knowledge is transmitted from its originator to the consumer). The crucial research brought together here also considers the vast array of information products, systems, and services on offer and the principal agents for the provision of knowledge in our age of omnipresent information, including: governmental, scholarly, commercial, and individual content providers; publishers; and traditional and virtual libraries.Volume III, meanwhile, focuses on the use and users of information. It concentrates on present-day information requirements and practices against the backdrop of our traditionally held notions concerning people’s information needs and information behaviour. Themes covered here include human–computer interaction and sophisticated, IT-enabled measures for gauging information use, such as bibliometrics and webometrics.The final volume collects key scholarship to explore the ever more central role that knowledge and information assume in today’s fast changing, technology-driven economy. The emphasis here is on the economics of information: the knowledge industry and the notion of information as capital at its heart; the economic characteristics of information as a commodity of major value; the contradictory perceptions of information as a public good versus private property; information creation, processing, flows and use from an economic perspective; and the value of information and the benefits it accrues for individuals, communities, and organizations.With a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Information Science is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars—as well as by policy-makers and information professionals—as a vital one-stop research tool.

This second in a two-volume set deals with a much shorter period of time than the first - from the impact of the Black Death to the urban crises at the end of the medieval era. However, the survival of fuller and more varied records allows closer examination of the medieval city at this time.

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.

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.

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.

Its sheer functionality, connectivity and accessibility make the Internet an information force to be reckoned with. However, there is very little qualitative data on how the Internet is impacting upon information-seeking in the workplace. The Media and the Internet is a crucial piece of research into how journalists and other media workers are actually using this new resource. Using largely unstructured interviewing techniques, more than three hundred journalists and media librarians were surveyed. The findings are highly relevant to all those working in information-intensive sectors.Contents: Project information; Abstract; Introduction; Methods; Literature review; Size and growth of the Internet; Patterns of use and user characteristics; The special case of journalists; Conclusions; Internet use and users; Internet issues; Case studies; Conclusion; References; Appendices

Provides a systematic method of identifying, evaluating and comparing information needs, as well as a framework to enable information services to gather information from users to aid information system design, and monitor the effectiveness of an information service. Examines the role of the Internet in meeting information needs.The section on collecting data now includes web log analysis and focus group interviews. Introduces the concept of the I-player, the digital information user.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Northern Lands Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages was in many ways distinct from the areas bordering the Mediterranean that were more directly influenced by vestiges of the Roman Empire. The northern lands developed a separate regional identity with broadly common cultural, political, economic, and social features. Scholars, however, have tended to ignore elements of this regional identity that survived beyond 1200. The Northern Lands: Germanic Europe, c.1270-c.1500 explores the region bordering the North and Baltic Seas, an area which remained more culturally and economically integrated during the late Middle Ages than scholars have generally perceived. The first part of the book provides the reader with context, with broad overviews of England, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, and the Holy Roman Empire during the late medieval period, followed by an analysis of the distinctive features, similarities, and differences of their governing institutions and laws. Further chapters explore themes including rural elites, family law and structures across social orders, urban society and government, and the development of a commercial and financial network. The Northern Lands will stimulate further debate and advance ongoing research into the unique regional identity that blossomed in northern Europe during the late medieval period.

The Northern Lands Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages was in many ways distinct from the areas bordering the Mediterranean that were more directly influenced by vestiges of the Roman Empire. The northern lands developed a separate regional identity with broadly common cultural, political, economic, and social features. Scholars, however, have tended to ignore elements of this regional identity that survived beyond 1200. The Northern Lands: Germanic Europe, c.1270-c.1500 explores the region bordering the North and Baltic Seas, an area which remained more culturally and economically integrated during the late Middle Ages than scholars have generally perceived. The first part of the book provides the reader with context, with broad overviews of England, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, and the Holy Roman Empire during the late medieval period, followed by an analysis of the distinctive features, similarities, and differences of their governing institutions and laws. Further chapters explore themes including rural elites, family law and structures across social orders, urban society and government, and the development of a commercial and financial network. The Northern Lands will stimulate further debate and advance ongoing research into the unique regional identity that blossomed in northern Europe during the late medieval period.

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 Google Generation examines original and secondary research evidence from international sources to determine whether there is a younger generation of learners who are adopting different styles of information search behaviour from older generations as a function of their patterns of use of online technologies. The book addresses the questions: might the widespread availability and use of search engines, such as Google, give rise to a different type of scholar who seeks out and utilises online information sources and thereby develops a different orientation to learning from older generations whose information seeking practices became established initially in the offline world.

The information professions - librarianship, archives, publishing and, to some extent, journalism - have been rocked by the digital transition that has led to disintermediation, easy access and massive information choice. Professional skills are increasingly being performed without the necessary context, rationale and understanding. Information now forms a consumer commodity with many diverse information producers engaged in the market. It is generally the lack of recognition of this fact amongst the information professions that explains the difficulties they find themselves in. There is a need for a new belief system that will help information professionals survive and engage in a ubiquitous information environment, where they are no longer the dominant players, nor, indeed, the suppliers of first choice. The purpose of this thought-provoking book is to provide that overarching vision, built on hard evidence rather than PowerPoint 'puff'. The authors of the acclaimed CIBER Google Generation study, and an international, cross-sectoral team of contributors has assembled together for this purpose. Key strategic areas covered include:the digital consumer: an introduction and philosophythe digital information marketplace and its economics: the end of exclusivitythe e-shopper: the growth of the informed purchaserthe library in the digital agethe psychology of the digital information consumerthe information-seeking behaviour of the digital consumer: case study - the virtual scholarthe Google generation: myths and realities about young people's digital information behaviourtrends in digital information consumption and the futurewhere do we go from here? Readership: No information professional or student can afford not to read this far-reaching and important book.

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.