Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

[AlHazred]

Here's a poser that's entertained me for weeks now on and off, and I thought I'd share for the other bibliomaniacs on the list.

 

Say you've got a Library. But not just any Library -- it's the Library of Babel from Jorge Luis Borges' story, or L-space from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, or whatever; it's the Library in another dimension that has access to all of the universes where writing exists. They've got the books H. P. Lovecraft would have written had he gone to the doctor in time. They've got the books from the Library of Alexandria; they've got all the works of Socrates and Aeschylus and the rest. They've got Plato's Hermocrates, describing both the detailed history and current location of Atlantis. They've got variant stories by your favorite pulp author, including the stuff that wasn't published here, but was a big hit in the Universe Next Door.

 

The question is, given this hypothetical Meta-Library, how do you catalog the books? If you don't catalog them, then you'll never find anything. You've got, say, sixteen thousand versions of The DaVinci Code, all slightly different; if you just put them in a huge pile in the "Dan Brown Wing," you'll never find the one you're looking for right now, that's got that great plot twist in chapter 16, or the one with the Appendix giving DaVinci's cipher keys.

 

If you use our world's systems, you've got other problems. Books with the same title and author will get the same number under Dewey Decimal (not sure of the other systems, like the Library of Congress) -- instead of an undifferentiated pile in the "Dan Brown Wing" you'll have them on sixteen miles of shelf between Aisle 44-F and Aisle 10e23.

 

How do you catalog this mess?

[sinanju]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Until you have a meta-numbering system for clearly identifying the different universes (and thus the books published in each one), you haven't got a prayer. Preferably the universe numbering system would be objective, and clear enough that deciding how to identify any newly-discovered universe would be obvious. In practice, it's almost certainly go be subjective; you start with an arbitrarily determined "base" universe, and define all others by how they vary from it, perhaps with something as simple as the order in which they're catalogued by the library (not necessarily the order in which they're discovered).

 

And even then, most books won't be identifiable by which universe they come from unless you have the...can't think of the word for it, the "chain of custody" they use to authenticate ownership of works of art, the "pedigree" of the book in question so you can be sure it came from Universe X1743A.

 

Any way you slice it, it's going to be a nightmare to administer.

[AlHazred]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

My current thinking is you need two to three different systems for each book, like a coordinate system for a two- or three-dimensional space.

 

• You need an equivalent to the Dewey Decimal/Library of Congress/whatever system, to describe the book's topic and provenance.
  
• You need a unique identifier for each Universe, to describe where it was written or at least published.
  
• You might need an identifier to identify timeline -- if we assume alternate universes, alternate timelines is also possible. Though, there's a whole lot of crossover for those last two, and you might get by with one multidimensional number/code for that one.
  

[ghost-angel]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

I would say you just need to add on a Universe Specific SKU to either the front or backend of the any other system.

 

You could get specific with things like Base Dimension or Variant Dimension plus a unique number. I wouldn't imagine it'd actually be complex to implement. Just tough to remember really long numbers.

[AlHazred]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

The reason I'm asking this is it might play into a dimension-hopping campaign bit I'm planning. I'm not sure how easy or hard I want to make it for the players to navigate, but I thought it would be interesting to make a sort of prop, where they could scan a list of available titles.

[Markdoc]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

I'm with Ghostangel on this one - the 10 digit ISBN identified a book by author/title/edition. The 13-digit ISBN can seperate the same title by publisher/language group/country (and there's a 14 digit GTIN (Global Trade Identification Number) on the way, which will refine regional issues). Amazon has had to deal with this problem already where a single book might exist in a dozen or more different editions, all slightly different. All that happens, as noted above is that you end up with a (say) 20 digit number cataloguing author/title/edition/publisher/language/region/alternate world/timeline.

 

cheers, Mark

[Lucius]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

and a code for "unknown" if no one knows where (when?) the book came from, and multiple editions of unknown provenance are marked a, b, c, etc.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Browsing with a palindromedary

[Nevenall]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

I would circumvent the entire notion of a cataloging system because the shear magnitude of changes would be too much for anything but a hyper intelligence or celestial being to keep up with.

What if a user could just direct a question to some "thing" that that thing would respond with pertinent questions of refinement.

"Are you interested in the unpublished works of Xenophon from the first second or third earth dimensional sub group?

Maybe it's a computer, maybe it's a spirit being that embodies books and uses magic to find what you want.

 

Also, that sounds like an interesting potential campaign.

[dmjalund]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

also - to find out about the universe the book belongs to use the Universe ID code (with Timeline subcode) to find the Encyclopedia that also belongs to the same universe

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Given just how complicated the entire parallel timeline / universe thing would be, I think the only way to catalogue a Multi-Dimensional Library is to first develop a cataloguing system that is itself multi-dimensional (as in considerably more than 3D). Straight alphanumeric progression simply may not be up to the job.

[dmjalund]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

all written information is inherently 1 dimensionl - including indexes, it is how it is organized/categorized that allows it to deal with the 2d and 3d of real life. adding a couple of extra dimensions should be no big deal

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

all written information is inherently 1 dimensionl - including indexes' date=' it is how it is organized/categorized that allows it to deal with the 2d and 3d of real life. adding a couple of extra dimensions should be no big deal[/quote']

 

Sure, but when using that to work out and display an organizational chart extending into several additional dimensions (at least), one's command of written expression gets kinda challenged.

[dmjalund]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Sure' date=' but when using that to work out and display an organizational chart extending into several additional dimensions (at least), one's command of written expression gets kinda challenged. [/quote'] terminology just gets converted into codes we don't understand anyway

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

The basic job of determining where a book is shelved could be done just fine using one of our existing systems.

 

Given that part of the catalog's job will be to find a given edition, a computerized index will be needed. That would help find books from (say) Dimension M-616 or DC-52 or L-41191, so as long as the user knows the designation for the universe of origin one should be able to manage things.

 

And if you're looking for specific features like an index or glossary, existing computerized catalogs can do that already.

 

(In short, your initial line of thought should be good enough.)

[Cancer]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Put me in with Ghost-Angel and Markdoc. Stack another pair of catalog numbers (for identification of universe and timeline) onto existing library classification schemes and I think it would work.

 

The truly interesting part of the library would be the self-documentation of the classification schemes for those other parts of the classification. Where those belong in the library is clear, but it'd be very fun to read....

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

I'm not seeing the difficulty. Any string of n numbers can be read as an n-dimensional array, giving you as many ways of sorting books as you need. Cross-referencing books on a given subject from different dimensions would be a breeze compared with finding volume 7 of the official history of the German Navy in World War One at your local university library right now. (No shelf scanning. That's cheating!)

[Nevelon]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Put me in with Ghost-Angel and Markdoc. Stack another pair of catalog numbers (for identification of universe and timeline) onto existing library classification schemes and I think it would work.

 

The truly interesting part of the library would be the self-documentation of the classification schemes for those other parts of the classification. Where those belong in the library is clear, but it'd be very fun to read....

 

When you are talking about all the information from all the parallel universes the problem is less how it is organized, but more of who knows what's important. I think the librarians are going to be very important. You would need a whole pack of xenolibrarians. The index and a map will tell you where the books are, but who is going to tell you that the Ernest Hemingway from Dimension 432f5a wrote everything in limericks, or that everything published in dimension 863ab4 is porn? You would have specialists in various fields, and when you needed to know something, you'd find the right person, who would then help you find the information.

[Burrito Boy]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

They've got variant stories by your favorite pulp author, including the stuff that wasn't published here, but was a big hit in the Universe Next Door.

 

I assume that includes the new Robert E. Howard stories in "Jeffty Was Five" by Harlan Ellison.

[AlHazred]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Sure. I'm sure they've also got all of Sherlock Holmes' monographs on the subject of detection and crime-fighting, Richard Castle's full run of mystery thrillers, and the complete Books of Bokonon. Me, I want to read all twelve volumes of Life by Unspiek, Baron Bodissey.

 

"Do you read Sutter Kane?"

[AlHazred]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Here's part of why this is a puzzler for me. Assume you've got a Universe designation - say, Earth-37A. If you assume, as many authors do, that these different parallel Earths are the result of a single choice at a single, discrete point of space-time, then you suddenly have to refer to Earth-37A-1 and Earth-37A-2. Your best bet is probably some sort of array formula that determines the exact point in multi-dimensional space-time where the work was produced; the arrays will quickly become insanely large, but there you go.

 

Of course, this is exactly why Borges had his Library of Babel in such chaos, and why in his Book of Sand (with infinite pages) it is impossible to find again anything that you've seen once.

[Cancer]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

I dunno. This sounds more like a problem from an introductory course in data structures to me. I recognize that the logarithm of infinity is still infinity (and trees reduce search times logarithmically), but before you have an infinite library you can still organize a lot of data.

[austenandrews]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Does the act of cataloging a book create an alternate timeline in which the book wasn't successfully cataloged?

[Markdoc]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Does the act of cataloging a book create an alternate timeline in which the book wasn't successfully cataloged?

 

Yes, of course - but since it wasn't catalogued, you don't need to worry about cataloguing it

 

cheers, Mark

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Schrodinger's Library?

[Nevelon]

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library

 

Schrodinger's Library?

 

Where all the books are both checked out and on the shelf until you go to get them.