Opalyn is Very Tired. But she also now has credits, and could go to the library! And also she's a little hungry, and she'll sleep better if she eats a little something first!

All right then. Library, refectory, bed. That's the plan.

Does she trigger any random encounters on the way to the library?

Just the usual.

Then she'll triumphantly stride into the library and ask for directions to activate the semantic assortation book search, intending to look for books about wizardry!

The library looks considerably more impressive once your collar is partially disabled in a way that lets you see more magic; and in particular, see the magical links that connect every book here into a giant nexus that in turn connects to some more distant nexus.

Anyways, they're happy enough to initialize a door into Polyfractal Library Space for her!

Opalyn is getting a second wind now that she's in a magical library.

If she understands correctly, her actual book selection experience starts on the other side of that portal, but she looks quickly at the shelves this side of the portal to see if anything catches her eye.

There's one whose spine proclaims it to be The Joy of Wizardry, and if Opalyn pulls it, she'll find that the cover looks like this!

Obviously she's going to open that and see what's inside!

...there is no plausible endowment of prior knowledge which could make this book not be really, really badly written.  It reads like a GPT-4 content farm that produces long fake anecdotes about kitchen recipes, followed by eventually coughing out a recipe found verbatim on some more concise website; obviously without explaining in the slightest how to "slice garlic" or how thinly to slice it, if you don't already know what that means.

As for the content, it's about configuring intangible magical tentacles that will produce slight tingles, as might possibly be an amusing diversion in bed if the victim was already really, really turned on.

Oh no. What if all of the books are like this, because their main purpose is for signaling intellectualism?

Surely this society has other subcultures that are not like the lewd dramatic prison? Surely there are actual intellectuals somewhere? Or at least, people who want to learn wizardry?

Opalyn pulls down another book.

Well if she just pulls at random she's going to get this sort of thing.

This seems to be some sort of guide to starting a fake religion, based on the cover art? Maybe she should check it out for Iilasir?

Nah, not when she's still on the hunt for books for herself and she doesn't know how many she'll find of those. She'll remember where she saw this volume, though, in case she wants to snag it on the way back out of the library.

Right now it's time to go through the portal, because she thinks her picks here don't actually count so far as the library's book selection algorithm is concerned.

She'll go through, and look specifically for wizardry books.

Bookcase on the LEFT:  Tales from the Crystal Dimension, The Old Wizard and His Harem, My Life In A Pirate Polycule, Across the Lightlines, Sadistic Sorceress Anthology LXIII

Bookcase on the RIGHT:  Aspiring Mage's Career Guide, Forty Things You Can Do With Tiny Portals, Encyclopedia Magica, Handbook of Obscure Necromantic Constants, The Home Handywizard's Guide To Mysterious Integer Sequences

What if Opalyn wants to go down BOTH PATHS?

Clearly the left side is cotton candy, things to read when she's tired of learning and just wants to have fun. The right side is lean protein and vegetables to make her strong. She should go down the right path.

She wonders if she can sneak Sadistic Sorceress Anthology LXIII off the left shelf really quickly and then take basically all of the books on the right shelf or if that will mess it up. She doesn't want to mess it up. She casts a forlorn look at Sadistic Sorceress, but takes Aspiring Mages and the Encyclopedia down off the shelf and looks through them.

Neither of these seem incredibly useful to somebody trying to learn wizardry for the first time.  Aspiring Mage is about which famous universities teach which subjects, and which major planets and interplanetary businesses were hiring... as of whenever this book was written, it looks old.  Encyclopedia Magica would have been more accurately named "an encyclopedic listing of all the magic items that were ever on sale by Trans-Spatial Resources" and for some reason it is really keen on letting you know that any kind of magical jewelry that exists comes in a version that turns into a personal virtual riding beast.

Hmph. She puts those two back and then continues down the path to the right.

LEFT bookcase:  Handbook of Obscure Necromantic Constants, Elementary Chemical Influences on Eighth-Axis-Positive Elements, Annals of Anal Sorcery Vol. 4420, Journal of Fruit Juice and Cognition Vol. 992

RIGHT bookcase:  Forty Things You Can Do With Tiny Portals, Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests, Slay Your Foes, Shields Up! Issue 88092.

The organizing principle dividing the first two shelves felt obvious: smut vs. more academic works.

What's the organizing principle this time?

The right shelf might be more about combat, perhaps? While the left shelf is more about... Opalyn is really not sure what the left shelf is about.

She picks up Elementary Chemical Influences and Nastily Exhausting to take a look.

Elementary Chemical Influences has complicated math in it that you are presumed to already know.  Nastily Exhausting is about prepping for the wizardry tests you'll get in the first year of a particular wizard school, and is written in a relentlessly peppy style which never really backs up and explains anything and instead exhorts you to do well on particular kinds of problem.

Maybe the left shelf is, like, overly specific and detailed, while the right shelf is not detailed enough? That would be a disappointing organizing principle.

She probably needs to be looking at fairly basic materials. She'll go right, and then try to steer back into more rigorous materials from there if she can.

LEFT:  Children's books, school materials.  (Slay Your Foes.)

RIGHT:  Adult nonfiction.  (Shields Up! issue 88092.)

This is a tough choice, actually! While she aspires to read adult nonfiction in this universe, she'll probably do much better with a book intended for a smart, curious, five-year-old!

She goes left.

LEFT:  Children's books.

RIGHT:  School materials.

Can she look at an example from each side?

LEFT:  Faster, Mommy, Kill Kill!

RIGHT:  Chemistry for Dullards