petersuber on Nostr: Saving science and scholarship from marauders I just finished Joshua Hammer's ...
Saving science and scholarship from marauders
I just finished Joshua Hammer's _Bad-Ass Librarians_.
It's a great story about heroic efforts to gather of hundreds of thousands of handwritten manuscripts from private homes around #Timbuktu, where they were under assault from rot and termites, to collect and repair them in the Ahmed Baba Institute (in Timbuktu, funded by Kuwait), to evacuate them surreptitiously to prevent their destruction Al Quaeda in their in the 2012-2013 invasion of northern #Mali, and finally to ensure their safe return to Institute.
I recommend it partly for history (new to me) of the medieval golden age of Muslim science and scholarship in northern Africa, centered in Timbuktu, and partly for the story of the dedication of a small band of Malian librarians to save their cultural heritage.
Of course there are also ominous and unavoidable similarities to current news.
#Librarians #Libraries
I just finished Joshua Hammer's _Bad-Ass Librarians_.
It's a great story about heroic efforts to gather of hundreds of thousands of handwritten manuscripts from private homes around #Timbuktu, where they were under assault from rot and termites, to collect and repair them in the Ahmed Baba Institute (in Timbuktu, funded by Kuwait), to evacuate them surreptitiously to prevent their destruction Al Quaeda in their in the 2012-2013 invasion of northern #Mali, and finally to ensure their safe return to Institute.
I recommend it partly for history (new to me) of the medieval golden age of Muslim science and scholarship in northern Africa, centered in Timbuktu, and partly for the story of the dedication of a small band of Malian librarians to save their cultural heritage.
Of course there are also ominous and unavoidable similarities to current news.
#Librarians #Libraries