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[Niddhoger]

On that subject, is there a way to encourage writing? I made my militia commander a scholar and within a year he wrote a book about the first goblin he killed as an adventurer under my control. Since writing that book, it's been 7 or 8 years, and a couple goblin sieges later that he's survived and scored many kills in, and he has yet to write another book on any topic at all. As a former adventurer dwarf, he's a master in tracking, so he does have a scholarly skill as well. He likes to ponder foraging behaviors.

Relieve him from military duty. Most dwarfs would rather train than ponder.

On a similar subject to what you said before that, if I have 2 libraries, is there any good way to have 1 library stocked with expensive parchment quires and the other stocked with cheaper paper quires? The latter library is where copies would be scribed, while originals would be written in the former.

I suppose you'd have to do it like hospitals- ban all non-approved materials as they enter the container.  You could also set the stocked quire count to 0, then set up a masterwork-only quire stockpile within the library.  Then up the setting and hope they pick the closest stuff.  Once all hte best items are in the "proper" library, you can screen the second libraries quires to make sure nothing important gets added.  Just dump/reclaim anything out of place.  Again, I have to do this with my Hospitals when they pick up the masterfully died GCS thread instead of the cow-hair junk. I've noticed the #$%@ers taking candy thread to the hospital too... 

[Walkaboutout]

Relieve him from military duty. Most dwarfs would rather train than ponder.

I did, but thank you for the reminder (I forgot to do so after the last siege). What I've been doing is deactivating his squad, and freeing his barracks, and then assigning him and his two squad mates as scholars. They spend almost every waking minute in the library, pondering or discussing. Between those three, they ponder and discuss migration habits, foraging habits, and social behavior endlessly. Write something about all that talk, you goobers!

(SIDE NOTE: I have to really hand it to Toady here. Libraries I thought were a great idea, but didn't think I would get too obsessed as to the details of how my dwarves use those libraries. To my surprise, I wait on pins and needles to see books coming from my fort denizens, and what it is they talk about. Great addition to the fortress.)

[Niddhoger]

Astronomy appears to be related to math since my astronomers were discussing math topic often.

Furnace operating appears to be an academic skill related to chemistry. After 3 years of study my chemist went from lvl 5 to 6 in chemistry and nothing to lvl 1 in furnace operating despite not touching a furnace.

While chemistry and furnace -may- be related, I'd just add that I've seen gaggles of unrelated scholars all discussing just one of their specialties.  So a critical thinker, a chemist, and an astronomer (all level 5 in each) get together and discuss moon phases.  Then they stop and discuss military ethics.  I don't think the skills need to be related to start the discussion, as I've also seen fresh off the boat migrants completely untrained in medicine or any skills for that matter take part in medical discussions.

[cochramd]

I suppose you'd have to do it like hospitals- ban all non-approved materials as they enter the container.  You could also set the stocked quire count to 0, then set up a masterwork-only quire stockpile within the library.  Then up the setting and hope they pick the closest stuff.  Once all hte best items are in the "proper" library, you can screen the second libraries quires to make sure nothing important gets added.  Just dump/reclaim anything out of place.  Again, I have to do this with my Hospitals when they pick up the masterfully died GCS thread instead of the cow-hair junk. I've noticed the #$%@ers taking candy thread to the hospital too...

Brute forcing it is my only option, eh? I might not even bother then. By the way, I've observed that every quire of the same quality and material in my fortress costs the same, so the quality of paper/papyrus/parchment doesn't affect quire value. Also, I might be wrong because every book in my fortress came from the caravan, but I don't think the quality of the ingredients affects the costs of a finished book or scroll, only their materials and the final quality.

I did, but thank you for the reminder (I forgot to do so after the last siege). What I've been doing is deactivating his squad, and freeing his barracks, and then assigning him and his two squad mates as scholars. They spend almost every waking minute in the library, pondering or discussing. Between those three, they ponder and discuss migration habits, foraging habits, and social behavior endlessly. Write something about all that talk, you goobers!

(SIDE NOTE: I have to really hand it to Toady here. Libraries I thought were a great idea, but didn't think I would get too obsessed as to the details of how my dwarves use those libraries. To my surprise, I wait on pins and needles to see books coming from my fort denizens, and what it is they talk about. Great addition to the fortress.)

Perhaps their skills determine how long they have to ponder before writing a book?

[greycat]

As an aside to some of the current discussion (this seemed like an excellent place to ask this), has anyone noticed that their dwarves are constantly shuffling writing materials from storage coffers in their library to the finished good stockpile?

9273: Writing Materials (Quires/Scrolls) and instruments constantly hauled between stockpile and locations (Library/Temple)

Haven't seen it myself, because I never use fully-open finished goods stockpiles, or tool stockpiles.

[Walkaboutout]

As an aside to some of the current discussion (this seemed like an excellent place to ask this), has anyone noticed that their dwarves are constantly shuffling writing materials from storage coffers in their library to the finished good stockpile?

9273: Writing Materials (Quires/Scrolls) and instruments constantly hauled between stockpile and locations (Library/Temple)

Haven't seen it myself, because I never use fully-open finished goods stockpiles, or tool stockpiles.

Thank you Grey, that is exactly what I was looking for. For whatever reason I missed that post when I checked Mantis. Much appreciated!

[Niddhoger]

As an aside to some of the current discussion (this seemed like an excellent place to ask this), has anyone noticed that their dwarves are constantly shuffling writing materials from storage coffers in their library to the finished good stockpile?

9273: Writing Materials (Quires/Scrolls) and instruments constantly hauled between stockpile and locations (Library/Temple)

Haven't seen it myself, because I never use fully-open finished goods stockpiles, or tool stockpiles.

Yeah... I'm a fan of using workshops as stockpiles myself, so have never had this bug either.  I put a paper-plant stockpile in a side room from my library, and put a quern/press/craft shop in it.  All of the spare quires are just left in the workshops, and the slurry is left just one tile from the press, that is also adjacent to the craft-shop.  I have a stairwell leading down into the rock stockpile below so that I can quickly make book-bindings in-shop too.  I haven't found a good way to keep animal-hair thread on site that doesn't involve mixing in the sheep-wool/yarn, though.  I hate using thread/cloth stockpiles in general, as it requires a bin-less QSP, massive amounts of space, or cancellation spam.  I guess I could just never raise yarn-animals, and just buy a few bits for moods via caravans.

[Button]

Has anyone been able to get a library going without importing books?

In my current game, the caravans have never brought a single book/scroll, and I've yet to get a single immigrant with reading, writing, or any scholarly pursuits. The dwarven civilization was practically extinct at embark time, so I think all the libraries in the civ may have been destroyed; and there are no human settlements in trading range.

I've had half a dozen dwarves, including my medidwarves, assigned as scholars for the better part of 2 years and they've yet to write anything down. They occasionally Ponder!, and they've got plenty of blank quires in the library, but they haven't made anything for the other dwarves to read.

[martinuzz]

Has anyone been able to get a library going without importing books?

In my current game, the caravans have never brought a single book/scroll, and I've yet to get a single immigrant with reading, writing, or any scholarly pursuits. The dwarven civilization was practically extinct at embark time, so I think all the libraries in the civ may have been destroyed; and there are no human settlements in trading range.

I've had half a dozen dwarves, including my medidwarves, assigned as scholars for the better part of 2 years and they've yet to write anything down. They occasionally Ponder!, and they've got plenty of blank quires in the library, but they haven't made anything for the other dwarves to read.

Give it more time. Even completely unskilled scholar dwarves can write books. I've had fortress born children reach adulthood, and write books.
It is possible that having more than one library helps increase chances of books being written.

[Niddhoger]

Has anyone been able to get a library going without importing books?

In my current game, the caravans have never brought a single book/scroll, and I've yet to get a single immigrant with reading, writing, or any scholarly pursuits. The dwarven civilization was practically extinct at embark time, so I think all the libraries in the civ may have been destroyed; and there are no human settlements in trading range.

I've had half a dozen dwarves, including my medidwarves, assigned as scholars for the better part of 2 years and they've yet to write anything down. They occasionally Ponder!, and they've got plenty of blank quires in the library, but they haven't made anything for the other dwarves to read.

I've had 30 scholars (at least half of which were there for 15 years) spend 6 years in my library (it was a relatively peaceful embark site).  I think 2 books were written in-house.  The other 10 were split between too scholars passing through.  One was so prolific, he wrote 6 books before leaving (didn't petition for residency).  ALL of these scholars were drafted as fresh migrants.  I'd check to make sure they valued knowledge (some think its a waste of time) and didn't have any negative mental traits (intuition and analytical ability were what I was looking for).  Otherwise, they became hauler monkeys or were drafted.

My point is, you still keep books written by passing scholars, and said passing scholars can eventually apply for residency/citizenship.  At that point they can forge master/apprentice relationships, and gain faster skill ups.  You can also have your scholars train in a militia squad until then.  They'll -very- quickly build up teacher/student levels.  When I released an entire squad into scholarly duty, half forged an apprenticeship within the first month.  You could also bring a "master" with you on embark.  One guy with... say 5 in critical thinking (or w/e you want) and 5 in teacher.  Hopefully, he'll begin taking on apprentices as you fill out your library with peasants. 

Many visitors actually arrive holding books.  Half of my books found in the L screen were held by residents/visitors.  I forgot to double check what happened when the elven poet (part of a performing troupe) that was dual-wielding books did with them upon gaining citizenship.   I believe they stayed as owned items.  You could... also arrange for a few unfortunate "accidents" to befall any guests holding a book you wish to claim.  Just don't use bridges and magma (for obvious reasons). My personal favorite is make a visitors-only tavern, then set up several troll/goblin cages.  Lock the door and let them loose with your military on stand by to clean things up.  Oh no! How did these raging beasts ever get in here! This is such a travesty, someone call the (sleeping) guards! ^.~

[Bouchart]

Part of it might have to do with a bug where dwarves compulsively move quires between coffers in locations.  If the coffers are scheduled for some task they can't be used for writing.

[Halnoth]

Astronomy appears to be related to math since my astronomers were discussing math topic often.

Furnace operating appears to be an academic skill related to chemistry. After 3 years of study my chemist went from lvl 5 to 6 in chemistry and nothing to lvl 1 in furnace operating despite not touching a furnace.

While chemistry and furnace -may- be related, I'd just add that I've seen gaggles of unrelated scholars all discussing just one of their specialties.  So a critical thinker, a chemist, and an astronomer (all level 5 in each) get together and discuss moon phases.  Then they stop and discuss military ethics.  I don't think the skills need to be related to start the discussion, as I've also seen fresh off the boat migrants completely untrained in medicine or any skills for that matter take part in medical discussions.

Dwarves can participate in any discussion initiated by another dwarf. In your example the Astronomer initiated the discussion. Previously in my tests I used one big library and of course dwarves would discuss a wide range of topics. This resulted in many scholars all with dabbling in whatever scholar skills were added to the pool. I got to hand it to Toady this system seems to mirror real life quite well. If 3 phds in chemistry, philosophy, and astronomy got together they may well discuss the moon. However, you don't know what you don't know so if you were a chemist who never heard of astronomy you probably wouldn't ponder stars and then write a book about star charts.

In the tests I am conducting now, I assign scholars to their own libraries so as not to contaminate my samples. As such, I can be reasonably certain which skills branch from which. Part of the purpose of these tests is to see what are the bare minimum embark skill requirements if you want a fully functional library with the full range of topics.

This test fort has been going for 10 in game years now and skill growth as I described has been consistent.

I am going to start a new test fort soon to test my hypothesis that critical thinking is the most versatile scholar skill. I'll also embark with a geographer and an optics engineer to see if I can find what they link to, if anything.

To answer the question about book writing; I am not 100% what sets off the activity but I have noticed that a dwarfs base writing skill helps frequency as well as a strong belief in knowledge.

[Halnoth]

After reading more of the posts I want to clear a few things up (perhaps I should update the first post as well).

First, reading books does not give xp toward anything other than reading and student.

Second, it can take sometime to get a library running if you just assign peasants. This is why I am doing these experiments so that we can figure out what skills should either be bought on embark or trained on site to kick start a library.

Third, military dwarves assigned to the library mostly discuss naturalist topics like foraging and water cycle. I have not seen them branch off into other topics yet, so I'm not sure how effective they would be at starting a library.

Fourth, it hardly matters if dwarves form a master/apprentice bond if the master is not highly skilled. The bonus from teaching/student skill is not very high either.

If you want to kick start a library, based off results so far, the best way would be to add a furnace operator, a mechanic, a record keeper, an appraiser, a pump operator, a military dwarf, and whatever medical/scholar migrants you have to their own individual libraries for a few years, then add them all together once they have branched out into all available topics and achieved a modicum of skill.

Conversely you can add them to a library all at once but likely the military dwarf would take the others on as apprentices which would not necessarily be the best since the military dwarf will teach primarily naturalist topics.

Edit: I should add that all the skills I listed for a starter library post embark are pretty easy to train (excepting of course medical/scholar skills which you would of course need to get from migrants unless you are breaking dwarves legs over and over).

[khearn]

TL;DR: To set up a library to need to break dwarves' legs over and over. Got it. Thanks!

[Halnoth]

TL;DR: To set up a library to need to break dwarves' legs over and over. Got it. Thanks!

A library full of legendary crutch walkers, you don't need legs to read after all.