Manuscripts and new technologies go hand in hand in Casa África

To locate a collection of 377,421 unique and valuable documents in Timbuktu, hide them, protect them and transfer them to safety in 27 households in Bamako - avoiding the jihadists who occupied northern Mali, bandits and war - through a vast territory in chaos, with more perseverance and cunning than means. That's the feat of a group from Mali, led by Abdel Kader Haïdara, director of the NGO Savama and head of the Mamma Haïdara Library. This morning in Casa África, as part of the eighth Meeting of Library and Information Sciences organised by this institution, Haïdara recounted the turbulent history of this rescue operation and explained the importance to the world of these manuscripts and their conservation.

This morning, the mythical Libraries of Timbuktu and their experience in the conservation and preservation of historical heritage opened a meeting structured around lectures by the experts Abdel Kader Haïdara, Javier Docampo and Elisa Yuste. There was also time set aside to exchange ideas, broaden knowledge, and discuss and reflect on the challenges and opportunities of the digital society in the field of libraries and documentation centres. Docampo, director of the Department of Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rare books of the National Library, gave a talk on the National Library of Spain’s manuscript collection. Elisa Yuste, from the digital content enterprise DosDoce, spoke of the arrival of the latest generation of technology to the world of books and of the impressive range of possibilities this brought to enrich the reading experience.