@Geezer-Weasalopes said in Bookworm: Hannelore's Fifth Year at the Royal Academy Vol. 1 Discussion!:
...I grudgingly concede that certain course materials would be of no conceivable use to non-ADCs unless there was an option for usurpation, for overthrow of archducal houses if they weren't up to holding what was theirs, built into the structure of society.
Usurpation from within archducal houses, yeah, no question that occurred.
Folks who hadn't been through the current ADC course wouldn't have the final two names required for doing the white stone stuff.
But limiting who had the knowledge required would seem contrary to a focus upon ensuring the Seal that is Yurgenschmidt not fail, so I really do wonder what the curriculum structure was initially.
There are real, specific, and divine consequences for knowledge of the names of the supreme gods being revealed to others. That isn't likely something that happened later on in history, but more likely something inherent to the foundation of Yurgenschmidt. Under that assumption, I think there would always be a layer of security in ensuring only those who receive the appropriate training even learn of the magic Archduke Candidates are expected to use, if only to limit the risk of any excessively curious scholars from breaking this taboo.
If I had to make an assumption, I would say the Archduke Candidate course was available to any archnoble at one point, and only later restricted to members of an already existing Archducal Family. In such a case, one would only need permission from the librarians to access the secret archive. How could the librarians have managed access without the hard requirement we currently know? Well, we know the current librarians won't let anyone enter the library at all without being registered... what if there was a similar registration process for the secret archive? There's also clearly a foundation for the library itself.
I suspect one librarian acted as the leader, someone who completed the Archduke Candidate course, and registered as master of the library foundation. From there, they would be able to control the critical functions of the library, as well as register individuals who met the criteria to browse the more restricted sections. I suspect this was later locked down to only those registered to a duchy foundation and the Royal Family once the latter was established formally. Rauchelstra despised war, and I could certainly see the same person taking measures to limit those capable of usurping a duchy foundation.
As for organization and adding new records... Once the Royal Family was established, I think only the Zent would be able to add new records, and the shumils would simply maintain whatever order was last decided upon by them. In this case, that would be the Zent who ruled prior to the civil war. Before then, if my assumption is correct, then the head librarian would add new records using creation magic learned in the Archduke Candidate course. It just doesn't make any sense to me that anyone other than a librarian would be responsible for this, outside of the paranoid security measures enacted by Zent Rauchelstra.
