Every discovery had been built upon earlier work.
Because of this, students were taught to respect the past and to document their own findings carefully. They were reminded that even a small mistake in records could mislead researchers thousands or even millions of years later.
Libraries were no longer simple buildings filled with books. Instead, they were vast networks of data storage systems spread across many habitats and hidden archives. Each important discovery was copied and stored in several different locations to prevent it from being lost.
Some archives were placed deep inside stable regions of space where there was little radiation and almost no chance of collision with debris. Others were stored within protected habitats where maintenance robots constantly checked the integrity of the storage systems.
