He wouldn't mind that at all.

She will turn slightly away, so as not to be 'looking' at him, and begin writing.

The book starts by introducing herself, and explaining that she's an alien from another world who arrived here by accident. She goes on to talk about how although she's fairly different from crafters in some ways (see the later chapters), she still has the impulse to try and make her new neighbor's lives better, and that therefore she's preparing to reconstruct her world's technology and give it to everyone she can.

She's going to work with the librarians to get a bunch of her world's books published, which will be useful, but the main technology she hopes to introduce are fixity crystals. Fixity crystals work like so, and can do these things, of which the medical applications are probably the most important.

She plans to gift a personal crystal to everyone she can find, and then leave baskets of them in public spaces for if people need more. She would really appreciate it if people would spread the word, and bring them to any neighbors that would be harder for her to find (such as if they live entirely underground). Getting that many crystals made is going to take her a while, though. They should expect her to start having enough to share around at all in about 60 days, and probably another 60 days or so to have enough for everyone.

Then she switches to talking about what her world is like. She explains that crystal people (the word a librarian coined for her species) do look a lot like crafters, but lack their territory instinct and ability to craft. Because she can change shape, she's planning on looking like a small green centaur-lizard once she's recovered from the accident that brought her here, so that people don't confuse her for a crafter.

She spends a chapter talking about what she's noticed about the differences between crafters and crystal people, and then weaves the questions that the purple librarian asked her into a questions-and-answers section.

She notes that she would love to get feedback from people on her plan and any potential improvements, or just to get messages from more crafters so she can get to know them better. She's also interested in figuring out how to get crystals to all the other thinking creatures, but thinks crafters should probably have priority.

She ends the book with the note that she's staying at the main library campus for now, if people want to send her letters, plus some notes on constructing a basic AM radio transmitter-receiver and test equipment for it if people prefer to send things that way. She's also investigating getting some extra machinery attached to the library so that people can send her messages using their library terminals, but hasn't worked that out yet.

Then she grabs a skein of air and turns it into a properly-formatted vinyl disk, which she hops off of her cart to present to Mr. shades-of-lavender.

"I assume you have a way to print that locally, since you must need to check the formatting on books somehow?" she asks.

Yep! Not here, they have a workroom for it, but it's just around the corner; she can come and see if she wants? It's pretty much just the same kind of machinery as the library, though.

"I might as well -- actually, I don't think I asked. Do you have a machine to transcribe the books as well, or do you craft them directly?" she asks. "It seems like it might be fairly finicky to do by hand, but I'm not sure how well you can specify very small details. If you can specify small things well enough, I cat show you how to make much more compact electricity-based computers."

Formatting is machine-assisted, they aren't making the books directly but they don't have a machine smart enough to do much of the work without them. Though also they do make the books at a larger size and then shrink them when they're done, that's much easier than trying to make machinery to work at tiny sizes directly.

"Oh, that makes sense! In that case you might be able to do something like photolithography by hand -- that's a technique that we invented for making very small etchings as part of compact machinery, and it would be a lot easier if you could shrink the components."

The limiter on that for library purposes is being able to transmit the image by ansible without needing a huge machine on the other end to decode it, he thinks, but if she has a clever idea for it everyone will be very happy about that.

"There are a few techniques for transmitting very precise instructions for drawing something to an etching machine, but that's not quite what I meant," she responds. "I can explain how to produce an electric computer from scratch by making very precise etchings and then shrinking them, but it's plausible that I should just offer you some electrical engineering textbooks from my world instead."

There's always people interested in learning about new kinds of machines, definitely.

The book checker takes up half the room he shows her to; it's made of hematite marbles and green tracks, and has a bucket of marbles at the bottom that he has to pour into a sorter on the other side of the room and then load back into the top of the machine. He puts a transparent viewing port in the printer for her, and makes the paper he's using translucent, loads in the new book, and sets it going.

She traces through the machinery as it works. Mechanical computers were never exactly relevant to her life before this point, but they are really cool to watch.

"I should probably talk to an engineer about putting in a more dense storage solution of some kind, but if I can't work anything out I'll come back and drop off a crate of the 100 most useful textbooks," she promises.

If she has thousands of books to contribute they'd probably be fine with her having her own satellite location, if she wants one, and as long as it communicates with the rest of the machinery correctly he doesn't think they'll care how she sets it up. (That's different from the thing with the special books that would interact with the ansibles; those would have to be here, since this is where the ansibles are.)

She thinks for a moment.

"I'm not sure I actually understand how satellite locations link up with the main campus, since you can't actually pass the disks across ansible links?" she says. "I guess you probably just have a reader on the far side and tie up the link sending the book's contents across. If I can have a satellite-location-ansible and some information on their tolerances I can work that out, probably."

Yep, that's exactly how that works - the satellites' readers' ansibles are only set up to transmit in one direction and it'd be a major hassle to rework the machine to transmit more things from the users' ansibles to a satellite station, is the main problem with doing fancy things there. There's probably a book on how setting up a satellite station works but he doesn't have that one memorized; he can look for it if she has trouble finding it.

"Oh, I see! That makes sense," she agrees. "I'll see if I can find that in the index while you read, then."

That sounds like a good idea.

He doesn't have any major suggestions for her book, but he does suggest adjustments to her wording in a few places and points out a few more where she can use a locally-common metaphor to condense an explanation. He'll also suggest she pick an identifier, if she hasn't yet - they're optional, but if she thinks she might want to publish more books it'll be nice for readers to be able to tell which ones come from her.

So they do have the concept of names! She was wondering, given the complete lack of names she's encountered so far.

"That sounds like a good idea -- what are the requirements for an identifier? My short identifier back home was 'Weeping Cherry', but I don't know if that has the right local format."

Being relatively short and unique are really it; there's a list he'll check but he's pretty sure 'weeping cherry' is fine.

Excellent! She will amend the book with his suggestions, and put herself down as the author.

"Do you know where I should go in order to talk to an engineer about adding machinery for the rest of the books from my world?" she asks.

She'll want the programmers for that. They're upslope; there's a path if she prefers walking but he'd take an airship for it by choice, or they do have an ansible connection to them for passing text back and forth if that'll work for her.

"I'd be fine with an ansible connection," she replies. "Although I also don't particularly mind pulling my cart up a mountain. I don't really get tired. Do you know whether the programmers will want to be approached in person or not?"

Going in person means she can talk to all three of them at once instead of just whoever has the ansible, and they do seem interested in meeting the alien, but it's up to her, really, writing back and forth should be fine.

"If they're interested in meeting me, I'll go in person," she states. "Depending on how our conversation goes, I might be able to fabricate the additional equipment in place. Is there just the one path to follow up the slope? Or are the directions more complicated than that?"

It's a little more complicated than that but not much, there's a turnoff for a service area for travelers and another for the side entrance to the maintenance team's area and he can describe how to recognize both of them. He can let them know she's coming, too, they aren't always quick about answering their bell if they aren't expecting someone.

"That would be very helpful! And I really appreciate that you were willing to share your perspective on what I should do," she tells him. "I hope to talk to you again soon!"

It's no trouble at all, and she's welcome back anytime!