Your goal in Ada's Library — first published as Phoenix — is to arrange all of the books in your personal display in an order that matches the books in the "master display".
The game includes larger "master" book cards in a six colors, as well as smaller books in these six colors. To set up, each player draws ten books from the bag, then places them in a row in front of themselves in the order drawn. Shuffle the six master cards, then lay them out in a row, e.g., red, light blue, gray, brown, yellow, dark blue. Shuffle the deck of action cards, with each player getting a hand of five cards.
Ada's Library differs from Phoenix in two ways. First, it includes only four books of each color whereas Phoenix had five pawns of each color. Second, in Phoenix, a complete game lasted three rounds, and players scored points at the end of each round based on whether they went out, had a pawn of each color, and had 3-5 pawns of a color in a row on their display. Whoever had the most points after three rounds won.