I have juggled silk hankerchiefs...it's easy, because they fall slowly, like feathers.
Well, perhaps I don't mean 'selfish'. Perhaps I mean 'dull'.
Oh and one player said he didn't want to have to learn the rules enough to be able to build a library.... <> It is a trouble with AM: the complexity of the system and background makes it a strain for those more interested in the role-playing than the mechanics.
cries a little
All games have their ups and downs. Try teaching someone to play "Flat Top" or "World in Flames" and suddenly you realise what a simple system ArsM is. :mrgreen:
If its really on the bad side like that, you can go with the option of letting one or several players play "numberless", with you keeping the characters stats and just "telling" the player the rough and simple version.
try explaining some yatzy and you should realise how simple ArM is - if only they are willing to believe in the simplicity!
My main struggle isn't getting people to understand the system. A lot of the new players I've gamed with or even taught the basics have grasped it well enough. But it is getting people to understand that they need to find out what they want to do with their magus' time!
My usual rant is about braking things up into short term plans, medium term, long term and endless plans. Short term is what you're doing righht now and a few seasons ahead. Read this book. VIsit that magus. Invent those spells. If a season or two passes between stories, it needs to be filled and executed fast. Medium term are those things needing some preparations, like Cult initiations, finding and enchanting a familiar, talismans, apprentices, large spells. Long term plans are ongoing projects or very large things, like going almost all the way in a cult, researching ancient magic etc. Endless plans are those things that drive and define a character, but the player and SG agree that they won't happen, although small victories can and should be won so it doesn't seem like a waste of time. This can drive stories along for a good while. Like finding the Phoenix, killing the remaining Diedne masters (if any).
Now this was slightly off original topic, but some sort of commentary to the last few posts.
On the original topic, I believe in giving the players some of what their magi might need/want. Not too muc, since this is boring IMHO. But enough to keep them occupied and to lead to other projects and expeditions. I don't expect the players to understand the game fully so they can write a complete list of what they expect the library to contain. A lot of my players could but instead just voice an oppinion or interest and let me design it. Which I gladly will. If they find something to be obviously missing, thay say it and I take that into consideration. And other SGs do this with me, and I like it. Some times that other person comes up with something related to what you want, but not something you thought of yourself, and actually find inspiring.
So will the necromancer be disappointed to find the ruinhed library looted does not contain the works of another necromancer? Not necessarily, because there might easily be tractati on Co, Me or Re, and what Lab texts are found can be traded.
I haven't let players design parts of such loot, because I know ehat to give them (at least I think I do). But some SGs delegate this to me, as one of the looting players. And as player or SG I think the same way, I don't get tempted to load things my way.
Can you do this with textbooks?Can you do it for books in a subject to which you are a neophite? Can you do it with a book whose weight can be measured in stones, with pages that are meant to be works of art? In a language other than your native tongue? Such that you can tell someone, definitively, that they will be able to manage X effects after spending a season studying it?
If so, you obviously have a much higher skill at book skimming than I do... we should probably make a separate ability for it. 
First, the number of players might well be greater than the number of magi who influenced the library. Just as you have players who don't care to work on the library, you might have magi who don't influence the library. So, while there were six magi of the previous covenant, maybe only three influnced the library to any great extent. In the game I am currently playing in, the covenant library was developed by one magus who focused the library toward his interests, no one else really did much. Then he left the game, and we now have a L20 summae in Intellego and no one who focuses on Intellego. We have someone who focuses on Creo, and someone who focuses on Terram, but we don't have any summae in these areas.
Second, If you want someone besides yourself and your player to build a portion of the library, I would be happy to.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, that actually makes it easier.
Not without a translated ebook edition, no. 8)
In the real world I can tell them what level of academic work is possible with a book.
It's not that difficult to pick up when you work every day with books.
Eh, how ever can you say if you dont even know if anything in the book is factual?
Sure you can estimate linguistical quality, but that says nothing about how much a book actually teaches...