"Well, they have a rack for that in the library."

"And what about new things in more generality than books?"

"Like what?" asks Parsley.

"The construction of new buildings, changes in business ownership, births, deaths, discoveries of novel materials, the happenings of assembly meetings, changes in law, crimes, criminals, judgements thereof...Catastrophic events like a housefire..."

"The assemblies happen on a schedule, and you can see it posted in the place they meet. I think the other stuff - if it's actually important, not, like, some rich jerk no longer has a house - gets around by word of mouth, mostly? Or they tell everybody who runs a restaurant or something, I've seen stuff like that."

"Back where I'm from, 'the press' is more often used to refer to people in the trade of finding out new information, verifying it, and publishing it, than actual presses."

"- well, that sounds like a pretty different skillset than the one we have."

"Yeah, that's certainly true.  But it has to start somewhere if it starts at all.

"Also, you can sell ad space in a newspaper, so it'd be a great source of revenue, if journalism sold well in the first place.  I think it probably would.  Or maybe introduce serialized novels..."

"I think you have... too high a plans to capital ratio," ventures Parsley.

That statement prompts a wordless frustrated noise.  "...Unfortunately, that is probably true.  But I don't know what else to do."

"Well, I hope you don't starve before you figure it out."

"You and me both.  You're a business owner, what would you recommend as an unmet need in the present market?"

"I don't know why you think operating a printshop gives me information about that," says Prism.

"...Because you're part of the economy and would know at least your own needs if not the needs of those that buy things from you."

"When I try to buy a thing, I can generally buy it. I can't think of anything I set out to buy recently that wasn't there. There's mice and food and water and clothing and so on to go around. I suppose dreamward space is a bit dear."

"...Well, I suppose I ought to go investigate the state of the art in that, then.  Dreamwards are very necessary, and if there's anything I have that could improve production...

"It's my civic duty to help out, as far as I'm concerned."

...Well.  Time to go back to the library.

It is there as ever.

What's the actual dreamward production process look like?  Accumulating property X from sources thereof, she knows, but how do they actually do it?  Is there a specific procedure they follow?

It doesn't have to be done all at once, which is good because it can be very time-consuming to find enough objects that have the property. People choose an object, usually a stone, often a sculpture - and then transfer the klaon-repelling property into that sculpture, thousands of times. Very small dreamwards are sometimes set up in rural areas so farmers don't have to travel into the city to visit their kids but mostly you want huge ones for a cityful of children to sleep in until they have grown up enough to move in with each other.

Do parts of those objects retain their warding properties, if they're separated from the whole?

Depends! Spiderwebs don't seem to but it might be that it's hard to bisect something like a spiderweb without making it not really a web any more. You can use just-cut wood, and live wood is one of the most easily accessible sources, so it's common for troporters to go out with their dreamward-to-be chopping up trees and quickly using each piece before it dies.

Once they're actually dreamwards, she means.

...Also she is absolutely going to figure out bonsai, if the volume of the material troported from doesn't matter.

Complete dreamwards are normally made extremely durable since if one broke klaonso could get in and eat everyone's children; no one has tried to double-or-nothing their dreamward that this library knows about.

...what, none have ever broken, chipped, been struck by lightning?

Not as far as the library knows.