Please allow me to clarify a few things about both the helpfiles and the library system, as a lot of things appear to be creating a fair amount of confusion.

First of all, the Helpfiles in place at this point are the ones that are still largely based on the original Library proposal that still dates back from early June. Since then, all our coders have worked on it and the system has changed tremendously as various part of the system were found to be uncodable or just too much work for the function they would provide. As all our coders broke headaches on how to fix the latest problem, keeping the proposal and helpfiles updated was pushed into the background, and now that the system is finally in a state where (part of) it could be imported, we suddenly found ourselves sitting with a bunch of helpfiles that were outdated and partially contradictive, however, it was decided that having these up was preferable to not having anything up at all. Please rest assured that they shall be corrected and perfected as time goes on.

As for the criticism ability, the main problem here is that large parts of criticism as could be implemented depend on the opinion of the reader, and as such, things such as "bad content" are subjective matter rather then hard fact. The main idea behind the library system is to create a scholarly society: If you disagree with a book's content, write a book that has it right (and provide an extra book for your library in the process). The criticism ability was mainly added so Librarians (and gods) have the ability to assure that no rubbish gets published. As time goes on, we might upgrade the system to encompass more functions, but this depends on how heavily it is used and how well it appears to be working. And if too many subjective points were added to the criticism system, this would just lead to complaints from the direction of the players, as the Administration would then have to use their opinions to judge criticism rather then hard fact. And that is something we're trying to avoid.

<3 Take your time. I think a lot of us kind of figured this out, in part or whole. We're just glad it's finally heeeere.

The main purpose of critiquing books is to provide oversight so a city or commune doesn't "game" the library system by publishing 100 blank books or books of gibberish. Allowing Librarians to act as each other's Quality Assurance Inspectors will (hopefully) provide a check-and-balance system so the libraries will be filled with "real" books.

Thus, if it is obvious that a city or commune published a book simply to raise their culture score, it is encumbant upon Librarians in other cities and communes to critique it. (Such as publishing books that are duplicates of other published books, plagiarized books, blank books, books filled with gibberish, books with one paragraph, etc.)

Just remember that the main purpose of critiquing is to prevent the publishing of books just to "game" the library system.

Another point that I forgot to mention is that this is after all still a game, and we get many people from many different backgrounds of society. And while some of us are familliar with things such as cultural format or how to phrase a scientific publication, the general population of the realm will not be familliar with such things, and while we strife to build our own culture that we can be proud of, the system should still be accessible to everyone with a spelling checker and who will put a few hours into learning how to work the editor.

HELPFILE UPDATE

As we're going over the helpfiles, mistakes come to light, which I would like to point out. People were saying that the helpfiles contradicted one another on the point of critique, however, the part in the HELP LIBRARIAN file that is labled "reviewing" actually concerns an alternative ability that hasn't been implemented at this time as it concerns a part of the contest sytem that is still on the design platform at this time. We apologise for the confusion, and this part of the file will be removed as we edit it.

The library helpfiles should hopefully be fixed now. If anyone notices any more mistakes within the next few days please post them here. After that we will concider them in the same way as normal helpfiles and they should just be bugged.

Thank you

I can't seem to find a helpfile on how to USE the library, just the commands for librarians...

Yes, I agree that's a bit of a complexity, the file that was originally intended for this is HELP LIBRARIES but this is about guild and order libraries (that's why it says in great libraries that they work the same as regular libraries.) I'll see if I can get a footnote added to HELP GREATLIBRARIES

LIBRARY brings up the commands, but I had to ask someone for that.

And of course, it only works indie the library.

LIBRARY and CATALOG

Syntax:
CATALOG
CATALOG CATEGORY
CATALOG
CATALOG LIST

Syntax:
LIBRARY BROWSE
LIBRARY BROWSE ACCESS
LIBRARY BROWSE
LIBRARY BROWSE LIST
LIBRARY INFO
LIBRARY CHECKOUT
LIBRARY CHECKIN

I am having trouble figuring out how to set a time that the books can be checked out.

There isn't an option to set that time which has been coded yet. I believe the time is somewhere in the range of several RL hours.

Is there a way to see who has checked out a book, and how long til it will be returned?

HELP LIBRARIES was altered yet again to cut on the nonsense and make it more workable.

That was just added, and I am not sure if it works.