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“Where do I find the Consumer Price Index?” “What was last year's unemployment rate?” “How do I locate data on the number of 1979 cars sold?” The above questions are among a multitude that a reference librarian might be asked concerning business statistics. To find the answers to these questions, the librarian may use a variety of sources.

As a new century approaches, the evolving global village becomes difficult to ignore. More than ever before, the United Nations will act as both universal meeting hall and clearinghouse. Consequently, information from and about the United Nations has potential instructional and research value to a wide variety of information professionals and their patrons. For many research topics, an international perspective will enhance the information‐gathering process. Reference librarians should take advantage of this perspective whenever possible, using or referring patrons to intergovernmental organization (IGO) information. This article is intended to serve as a collection development guide to sources of United Nations information and thus help librarians attempting to cope with the lack of bibliographical control over United Nations materials.

Since the second world war, considerable research funds and effort have been spent on developing means for controlling the ever‐increasing flood of recorded knowledge. As far as librarians and information officers are concerned, the problem can be divided up into five distinct stages, as shown in Figure 1.

The practice of bilingual education in the United States has been discussed since the 1920s. During the 1920s and early 1930s several states taught in the native language or developed curriculum materials based on the cultural background of the students. Some school districts provided partial instruction in English, and partial instruction in the native tongue. However, little research can be found in the literature during this time frame.

Business activities generate a vast amount of diversified information products. The volume and variation in format, regularity, availability, and content of business information products presents the librarian with a unique collection development situation. To further complicate matters, much of this information is poorly documented and only fleetingly available.

Total factor productivity (TFP) change is an important driver of long-run economic growth in the construction sector. However, examining TFP alone is insufficient to identify the cause of TFP changes. Therefore, this paper employs the infrequently used Geometric Young Index (GYI) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to measure and decompose the TFP Index (TFPI) at the firm-level from 2009 to 2018 based on Malaysian construction firms' data.

To improve the TFPI estimation, normally unobserved environmental variables were included in the GYI-TFPI model. These are the physical operation of the firm (inland versus marine operation) and regional locality (West Malaysia versus East Malaysia). Consequently, the complete components of TFPI (i.e. technological, environmental, managerial, and statistical noise) can be accurately decomposed.

The results reveal that TFP change is affected by technological stagnation and improvements in technical efficiency but a decline in scale-mix efficiency. Moreover, the effect of environmental efficiency on TFP is most profound. In this case, being a marine construction firm and operating in East Malaysia can reduce TFPI by up to 38%. The result, therefore, indicates the need for progressive policies to improve long-term productivity.

Monitoring and evaluating productivity change allows an informed decision to be made by managers/policy makers to improve firms' competitiveness. Incentives and policies to improve innovation, competition, training, removing unnecessary taxes and regulation on outputs (inputs) could enhance the technological, technical and scale-mix of resources. Furthermore, improving public infrastructure, particularly in East Malaysia could improve regionality locality in relation to the environmental index.

This study contributes to knowledge by demonstrating how TFP components can be completely modelled using an aggregator index with good axiomatic properties and SFA. In addition, this paper is the first to apply and include the GYI and environmental variables in modelling construction productivity, which is of crucial importance in formulating appropriate policies.

The spatial development of urban areas affects the characteristics of landscape as well as people’s aesthetic perception of it. Specifically, sprawl results in an urban morphology which is diametrically opposed to the compact city model and which assumes several kinds of patterns: for example “striped”, “ribbon” or “leapfrogged” urban development. Assessing urban morphology in spatial terms is crucial to urban policy, while landscape metrics are the key to a comprehensive understanding of different urban development patterns. The purpose of this paper to design and test an urban morphology indicator (UMI) for the Lombardy Regional Landscape Plan.

The paper describes an UMI that can be used to identify the heterogeneity of built-up patterns according to urban porosity, fragmentation and patch shape. This UMI is a result of Esri ArcGIS 10.3 “grouping analysis” which works by applying a spatial statistical metric for clustering geometries in a given geographical area.

Morphological analysis was used in regional urban development policies with a view to minimising impact on surrounding ecosystems and preserving the natural environment and landscape. It defines 28 different urban morphology patterns in the region, which are divided into systems, polarities and urbanised units.

The proposed methodology differs from those traditionally used in qualitative/descriptive landscape planning and supports the identification of morphological features with quantitative statistical and spatial data, allowing a fine-scale assessment of complex metrics.