Great Library Clarifications

The divine scholars have convened together to discuss the workings of the Great Libraries, including the tasks of publishing and critiquing books as well as the nature of the Library Prestige Contests themselves.

As a result of deliberations, there have been notable changes to HELP GREATLIBRARIANS and HELP PUBLISHING, and there is a new HELP PRESTIGECONTESTS.

Most of these changes are clarifications of already existing rules. Particularly there is clarification of divine scholar considerations in critiquing scholarly books, including:

• Plagiarism. See HELP PLAGIARISM.
• Wrong category. If a clearly literary book is filed as scholarly, and vice versa. Note, there will always be books that straddle the categories, so this will usually be an egregious case: For example, if a book of entirely, clearly fictional short stories were published in the scholarly category.
• Lack of evidence for scholarly claims. If a scholarly book makes claims that are not borne out by citations, references, or notes to evidence in game, the book may be reviewed a failure due to its low credibility. Note that the book will essentially remain published, but it will be labeled a work of low quality.

The divine scholars recognise that the scholarly endeavour is by its nature potentially veiled in shades of grey, and do not expect absolute accuracy or adherence to lore. Likewise, varying, even contradictory, perspectives may be found scholarly books without problem. However, acknowledgement of such potential differences is important.

The most likely cause for review failure due to lack of evidence is if the scholarly work is written from the vantage of absolute truth, as if declaring canon, without the above noted evidence. The easiest way to prevent such a review failure is to include caveats or room for disagreement in book contents. For example, “It is rumoured that X caused Y. If we take the rumour to be truth, then it follows that…” or, “Though this books sets forth many principles relating to Z, it is by no means an exhaustive work…” or, “Some say that God A did B in the years prior to the Taint Wars…” Obviously, the above examples are also not exhaustive, but they set for an example of allowing room for growth and disagreement.

• Recourse: Whenever divine scholars review the work as a failure, they will send a message to the author/editor of the book and the Great Librarian of their organisation to explain in detail the reasons for review failure and potential suggestions for success in the future.

These noted clarifications in Library matters are in place as of this writing.

Our hope is to dispel confusion around the Library and publishing and to provide the information to allow our Librarians and writers to produce the best works they can!