Actually, what seemed even worse to me was that you could not unenchant a stave to learn its spell. I had collected something like 12 of them to do exactly that, and they weren't in the list. I was profoundly disappointed.
You're right... for some reason I thought I couldn't disenchant staves because I already knew the effect... but I guess that wasn't right.
This game is more dumbed down than I thought...