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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] Order

I dislike 'Preservation' because a book that cannot be found may as well have been destroyed. While a book damaged by the environment can be restored/replaced.

Security feels redundant. The thing is already a Dwarf vault in one of the most secure Holds on the planet.

Comfort and Holy are somewhat tempting. But I have lost enough hours and days trying to grind through obscure sorting systems to prioritise Order above all else.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Enduring is the option to take if you want the library to survive a direct meteor strike followed by hostile occupation of the Karak for a thousand years, not the option necessary for the dwarves to do basic due diligence.
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I mean yeah obviously they are not going to leave half the levels submerged in water and what have you, but Preservation is the only one that actually specifies procedures that are necessary for long term storage of papers/vellum. Its the difference between a book lasting three centuries and thirty.

Considering that this is very much a "What mark has Mathilde Weber left on the world" kind of vote in terms of legacy, Preservation just strikes me as satisfying in that regard.
 
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[X] Order
[X] Comfort

If the K8P falls again the library inside will be of no use to anyone for the next whatever-hundred years it takes to retake the hold again, so it may as well not be here. Order or Comfort will make it more useful while it is accessible.
 
pucflek said:
Even if you disregard violent causes for possible book loss, however, you end up with the fact that unless exceptional planning goes into how to preserve them, you end up with parchment crumbling to dust in a few hundred years anyway, and what good is that to anyone. I doubt any amount of honor of K8P can stop the passage of time.
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The best way to preserve knowledge is to create new copies of old books. Every book right now on the planet will eventually crumble to dust, no matter how well preserved it is. But if libraries continue to exist, than the books and the records they hold will continue to exist... that said, we don't have magic runes. The dwarves do. They can make a library that lasts forever, or close enough. And they happen to live on a war-planet where a library that can be a permanently secure record would be incredibly useful.

[X] Preservation

I was really really really split on this. I want to have faith in K8P, and in our decision to put a library here because K8P will not fall. But at the same time, what's the best improvement for our library? How do we make it the library, putting in consideration the needs of the people and world it's made for? Order is, ultimately, a solvable problem. Something we and future librarians can work on to do in the future. But preservation, on the other hand, is something that we simply can't add in to an equivalent level unless we build it into the bones of this place. A library that can survive an apocalypse is something of immeasurable worth to a planet that's been hit with said apocalypses multiple times. It will be a defining feature for anyone who would ever use it: Books you store here will be kept. No matter what.

And what if the worst does happen? What if, some hundreds of years hence, K8P does somehow fall, yet the library remains? The lost K8P will hold something worth more than gold, or dwarven favor, or trade, or strategic location, or all of the above combined. Knowledge, from all over the world. And in such a worst-case scenario, the library would be a reason for people all over to help re-take K8P. Our library could become a cornerstone that itself helps keep and preserve K8P. And what more could a library aspire to?
 
Since Holy does not seem to have much of a chance changing to this, not because I think books will be lost to the ages in the back of the stacks in its absence, but because I think preparing to the fall of the hold is needlessly defeatist. Yes is suits the malaise of the dawi, but I do not think it fits Mathilde.

[X] Order
 
LockedMind said:
It can aspire to be better library.
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Tell that to the legendary Library of Alexandria. Perhaps the best library of the ancient world, with tens of thousands of scrolls from across the world and its own attached research institute. Except, you can't. It only lasted for 500-600 years.
 
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I think we need to properly consider what it would mean for the Library to have Order, or Preservation, as its baked in and most prominent feature.

We know that Khazalid writing, Khazalid speech, and Runecraft are able to interact with each other, using Runes that are not lost (as it was possible for Mathilde to acquire an autotranscriber for Khazalid), and we know that Runecraft is able to interact with enchantments.

A baked in Order system might have something like a bunch of Khazalid keywords set up in a nesting pattern, such that each book within the Library can be given a unique identifier, with runecraft able to be used by visitors to search through the libraries collection for all relevant texts for their research and then near-instantly locate the precise books that they need, complete with a MAPP interface that directs them where they need to go.

This is the sort of thing that can only be done by building the entire libraries around an Order system from the very beginning, and is far more powerful and flexible than "merely" a decent organizational system that can be implemented afterwards.

By the same token, choosing to focus on Preservation on the library from the very beginning will alter the base construction methods and architectural design of the library, involve use of a lot of expensive materials and craftsmanship, and will involve a great deal of Runic defences meant to make the library all but impregnable, which will be difficult or impossible to try to match with efforts made once the library is built.
 
Derpmind said:
Tell that to the legendary Library of Alexandria. Perhaps the best library of the ancient world, with hundreds of thousands of scrolls from across the world and its own attached research institute. Except, you see, the library isn't here anymore.
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A) The LoA died to lack of funding, I don't think that's much of a concern here.

B) It almost certainly didn't contain hundreds of thousands of scrolls, historical people saying it did were writing centuries later. Far as I'm aware, modern scholarship puts it around 50,000 scrolls, though all methods for trying to figure that out are rough at best.
 
Mopman43 said:
A) The LoA died to lack of funding, I don't think that's much of a concern here.

B) It almost certainly didn't contain hundreds of thousands of scrolls, historical people saying it did were writing centuries later. Far as I'm aware, modern scholarship puts it around 50,000 scrolls, though all methods for trying to figure that out are rough at best.
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Libraries die for all kinds of reasons, no matter how useful or acclaimed they were. Very few can claim to have lasted over a thousand years. Here we have an option to make a library that will. (And everyone who visits, or might donate books, will know that.)

Thanks for the correction on the second part.
 
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Mopman43 said:
A) The LoA died to lack of funding, I don't think that's much of a concern here.

B) It almost certainly didn't contain hundreds of thousands of scrolls, historical people saying it did were writing centuries later. Far as I'm aware, modern scholarship puts it around 50,000 scrolls, though all methods for trying to figure that out are rough at best.
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There's better examples then Alexandria. Baghdad didn't die to a lack of funding, it died to Mongol invasion, and when it fell countless wonders of the Islamic Golden Age were lost
 
Redshirt Army said:
By the same token, choosing to focus on Preservation on the library from the very beginning will alter the base construction methods and architectural design of the library, involve use of a lot of expensive materials and craftsmanship, and will involve a great deal of Runic defences meant to make the library all but impregnable, which will be difficult or impossible to try to match with efforts made once the library is built.
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On the other hand, we can always build more defences outside the library. And hire people to make new copies of old books.
So long as K8P stands Preservation serves little purpose.
 
Angelform said:
On the other hand, we can always build more defences outside the library. And hire people to make new copies of old books.
So long as K8P stands Preservation serves little purpose.
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Neither Order nor Preservation are likely to have a particularly large immediate impact on the use of the library - our collection will be big, but not impossible to search through, for at least the next few decades even without an Order focus.

Some extra scholars might be tempted to come to the library because of the convenience of searching of Order, but by the same token some extra libraries might share knowledge because of the security of Preservation.

Both of the options will only show their full potential in the longer term.
 
[X] Security
[X] Holy
[X] Order

Because these are the three I want to see the most, especially in regards to what Redshirt said. Super over the top Comfort and Preservation would be nice, but security, order, and holiness are much more interesting in how they would be achieved.
 
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Angelform said:
On the other hand, we can always build more defences outside the library. And hire people to make new copies of old books.
So long as K8P stands Preservation serves little purpose.
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So long as K8P stands. Which not everyone will have faith in. But if we make a library truly meant to last, despite everything Mallus might throw at it, then it's like choosing between a shield of gromril or steel. The latter makes for a good library, while the former makes for a one-of-a-kind library that would be a safe place to store your books in. It's one heck of a bargaining chip for getting people and organizations to invest in or work for the library, and it could open doors that nothing else would.
 
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