Fair enough, although I'll point out that indexing is not an ancient practice. If we insist on some degree of realism in cattle raising and stead-building practice, why should libraries get made up out of whole cloth?
However, having said this, I think you are right -- LM in urbanized Esrolia, for example, think the clan LM lawspeakers and sages are ignorant buffoons, and the clan LM think the Esrolian sages are out of touch with the god's higher functions (like prophecy). My comments are largely directed at clan-based LM. Literacy is much more wide-spread in Esrolia, and the opportunities to read are greater (although the LM have had to get over their jealous "possession" of literacy there) -- there are also libraries of more than a couple dozen "volumes," and those libraries might actually contain volumes. I still doubt that there are a lot of modern library issues -- there will not be enough items for an elaborate classifications system. Something I can imagine being an issue is systems of labeling -- perhaps one chief priest has the sages go through and write reasonably elaborate "colophon tags" to identify everything in the collection. Some of these, of course, are wrong. The next Chief Priest has them removed, to prevent thieves and non-LM users (assuming they can even get to the stacks) finding things. The next Chief Priest thinks that's silly, and has the colophon tags reattached, but many have been lost and others are wrong and some get attached to the wrong documents and no one really remembers exactly what the shorthand symbols meant.... You can have most of the same fun without bringing Melvil Dewey to Glorantha.
Peter Larsen
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