16.1.1 GREAT LIBRARIES
The Legendary Great Libraries of Lusternia are the greatest mortal centres of
learning found in the Basin of Life. Their aim is to outgrow the Libraries of
rivalling cities and communes, obtain knowledge that will give the
organization an edge over their rivals and draw scholars and bards like a
flame draws moths. Maybe someday, the Greatest of the Great shall rival the
Elder Libraries of the Gods.
Each city and commune has one Great Library that is unique to that
organization, no additional Great Libraries can be constructed by Mortals
without the aid of an entire city or commune behind them. They hold the
conglomeration of all knowledge and wisdom of that particular city or commune
and function as the pinnacle of Literature and Scholarship to the outside
world. The Great Libraries are such great institutes of learning that they
draw students from all over the basin who spend time in order to increase
their knowledge of the world. As a service to the library they study in, these
scholars and bards pay tithes to the city in the form of Power to their nexus,
and the bigger and more cultural the library is, the more students they will
draw to their majestic halls.
Great libraries behave exactly the same as regular libraries with a few
differences and upgrades. First of all, all great libraries have a public
section, this section of the library holds all published books of the realm,
and this means that all public sections in all great libraries hold the same
books. Books cannot simply be added to the public section, instead they must
be published. In order to publish a book, this work must already be in the
library from where it can be selected from publication.
Unlike bookshelves and regular libraries, city librarians are a ministry,
meaning that the librarian is appointed directly by the city leader and the
librarian directly appoints his own aides. The position is an important one in
that the librarian is responsible for the books in his library, the books that
get published and acquiring books for the library, in a sense, if you have a
bad librarian, your library is not going to be generating any power.
For authors only: Once your book has been placed in a great library, all fees
will be waived whenever you checkout your book. Further, you will always be
given the original of the book. This is done to allow you to edit books and to
allow you to give your book to a bookbinder to be copied into a second
original, which can then be copied further in order to sell them in shops or
just spread them through the basin.
For purposes of determining the weight of a published book in regards to
library cultural ranking, this is determined by the total number of words
and whether or not the book won a cultural contest. Below are the
weighting factors.
less than 1,000 words: 1
1,000-2,499 words: 5
2,500-5,999 words: 12
6,000-9,999 words: 25
10,000 words or more: 50
Contest Winner: +100
See also: HELP LIBRARIAN, CRITIQUING, CULTURE