Offering Book Library Assistance

[Halister Marner]

For players of any shard who have the drive to preserve history and create a beacon for it on their shard, I am offering my assistance in helping them bring their ideas to life.

I can offer advice, directions, resources such as red leaves (I have tens of thousands available), and even some limited in game time to assist.

Please feel free to send me a PM if you require assistance, and I will endeavor to provide it to the best of my ability.

-- Halister Marner

Head Librarian - The Grand Britannian Repertory

 

[sablestorm]

As you are a head librarian, I thought perhaps we could begin a discussion here about books, libraries, and how we manage them. I'm on Pacific shard and we had a few libraries, which I have demolished this past month in order to consolidate to the prized castles and keeps my alliance members are hoping for. What we did, however, was keep our original collection of player written books securely stored away (they are currently in our guildhouse). Then we'd make copies of these books and place them on publicly shared bookshelves for anyone to come take. When books were taken, our scribes would make more copies and replace them. We'd also take our player written books and visit the bookshelves in various NPC buildings, copying those books into the empty books found on those bookshelves. Does anyone else do this?

 

[Halister Marner]

I remember that library, that's an interesting idea. I haven't seen anyone else with a setup exactly like that. I would fear doing that with a larger collection though due to the work required to replenish the shelves should someone take all the books.

I've seen a few interesting library variations actually. Revolving collection libraries, where 50-100 book sets are rotated every month or so paired with a theme for that month, fully thematic libraries, and of course the classic standard library setup.

Personally I've worked on perfecting the classic setup for my own library. I purged books from other shards, books with little relevance, and most OOC works to keep quality high. Over time the quality of books became more important than the quantity, especially since I've maxed out my lockdown limit currently with minimal decor and 1500+ books on the shelves, and about 800 more waiting to go out should lockdowns increase. Had I kept the low quality and irrelevant books, it could have easily topped 3000.

In terms of organization, I've organized each book shelf by topic, dyed each book a color to correspond with that topic, alphabetized every book, and created a master list of each book per shelf to assist in finding books easier.

Taking it a step further, I had actually created a better organization system for large libraries based off a specific setup. However I need more lockdowns to implement it properly. I'll list the setup I thought of below:

For the system, the pack number will be recorded (I.E. Pack 1, Pack 2, Pack 3)

The new recording scheme will list the row number (1 - 5), as all bags will be arranged with 35 books per bag divided into 7 books per row.

Each shelf, along with a category, will have a number assigned to it (IE, Shelf 3 - Legends and Tales N-Z)

The master list online will be updated with the shelf, pack, row, and book number to make it easy to find books.

For example, the book "The Life of a Bard" could be found in S3 P1 R2 B4. (or "3124" to make it easier)

This shows The Life of a Bard is in the Legends and Tales (N-Z) shelf, in the first pack, on the second row of books, and it is book number 4 of that row.

The goal is to have a quick, easy system to categorize 2000+ books, while still keeping an organized listing that people can browse on the fly.