Two Great Library Stories — Yay Bibliophiles!

Timbuktu’s crumbling manuscripts, validating the notion that Africa had fantastic intellectual resources many centuries before being colonized by Europe,  are getting a new lease on life, reports the BBC:

Across Timbuktu, in cupboards, rusting chests, private collections and libraries, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of manuscripts bear witness to this legendary city’s remarkable intellectual history, and by extension, to Africa’s much overlooked pre-colonial heritage.

“This is the proof,” said Mr Boularaf.

“Africa was not wild before the white man came. In fact, if you will excuse the expression, it was the colonising that was wild.”

Ahmed Saloum Boularaf has been caring for documents for years

But this unique literary evidence is under threat, as time, the elements, and a simple lack of resources take their toll in northern Mali.

“We are losing manuscripts every day. We lack the financial means to catalogue and protect them,” said Mr Boularaf, who recently rescued his collection from the rubble of a mud building next door that collapsed after a rainstorm.

Now a giant, new, state of the art library has landed – rather like a spaceship – in the dilapidated centre of Timbuktu, offering the best hope of preserving and analysing the town’s literary treasures.

After several years of building and delays, the doors are finally about to open at the Ahmed Baba Institute’s new home – a 200 million rand (£16,428,265) project paid for by the South African government.

“It’s a dream come true,” said South African curator Alexio Motsi, exploring the underground, climate-controlled storage rooms that will soon house some 30,000 manuscripts.

And, in Westbury-sub-Mendip, in Somerset, England, a new library — probably the world’s smallest — has opened in a re-purposed red telephone booth. It was bought for one pound and now has four shelves and a red plastic crate with kids’ books in it.

Take one, leave one: no cards, no teeny tiny librarian. No fines!