Positing that the treasure of the Jews was brought to France after the Visigoth sack of Rome, the authors explore the Middle Ages and Renaissance profusion of secret societies, and suggest that they were established to protect this hidden wealth, which remains a political power in the 1990s.

This book contains a selection of the best papers from WEBIST 2009 (the 5th Int- national Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies), held in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2009, organized by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Inf- mation, Control and Communication (INSTICC), in collaboration with ACM SIGMIS and co-sponsored by the Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC). The purpose of the WEBIST series of conferences is to bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in the technological advances and business applications of Web-based information systems. The conference has four main tracks, covering different aspects of Web information systems, including Internet Techn- ogy, Web Interfaces and Applications, Society, e-Communities, e-Business and e-Government. WEBIST 2009 received 203 paper submissions from 47 countries on all con- nents. A double-blind review process was enforced, with the help of more than 150 experts from the International Program Committee; each of them specialized in one of the main conference topic areas. After reviewing, 28 papers were selected to be published and presented as full papers and 44 additional papers, describing work-- progress, published and presented as short papers. Furthermore, 35 papers were p- sented as posters. The full-paper acceptance ratio was 13%, and the total oral paper acceptance ratio was 36%. Therefore, we hope that you find the papers included in this book interesting, and we trust they may represent a helpful reference for all those who need to address any of the research areas mentioned above. January 2010 José Cordeiro Joaquim Filipe

French-Canadian soldier, Napoleon, proposes to Lea during WWI, promising golden fields of wheat as far as the eye can see. After the armistice, he sends money for her passage, and she journeys far from her family and the conveniences of a modern country to join him on a homestead in Saskatchewan. There, she works hard to build their dream of a prospering farm, clearing fields alongside her husband through several pregnancies and even after suffering a terrible loss. When the stock market crashes in ’29, the prairies are stricken by a long and abysmal drought. Thrown into poverty, she struggles to survive in a world where work is scarce, death is abundant, and hope dwindles. Will she and her family survive the Great Depression?

This work skeptically explores the notion that the internet will soon obviate any need for traditional print-based academic libraries. It makes a case for the library's staying power in the face of technological advancements (television, microfilm, and CD-ROM's were all once predicted as the contemporary library's heir-apparent), and devotes individual chapters to the pitfalls and prevarications of popular search engines, e-books, and the mass digitization of traditional print material.

Beginning investors will find thorough guidelines for making good decisions in this guide to private gold ownership. Emphasis is placed on the asset-preservation qualities of gold at a time when investor uncertainty about the economy and recent investment scandals have led many to seek asset diversification. The economic and political trends driving gold marketing are detailed, as are the reasons why gold plays an important role in millions of investment portfolios worldwide—as both a hedge and an investment for capital gain. Topics examined include understanding gold's role in combating inflation and deflation, how to select a gold firm, the history of gold since 1971, storing gold, and government debt.

The California Gold Rush.