Just received a much longer reply and permission to share it:
Hi Miles,
Thanks for your message. Tony Dowler is our campaign manager and guru.
I'd like to get him into this conversation if you don't mind, and I'm
copying Brian Mayer as he is a really important member of our team on this
effort and I see him in the thread your inquiry came out of.
A couple of things about the subject -
right now, we are concentrating on ensuring the physical integrity of the
evacuated manuscripts. they are jam packed in metal footlockers in an
environment that is much, much more humid than their home in Timbuktu. We
have seen signs of trauma and also of humidity based risk (molds, mildew,
fungus). If we don't get the manus into individual boxes with humidity
traps before the rainy season get going next month, we are very afraid that
we will lose them as "wet" based issues spread like wildfire on shelves in
libraries. you can imagine what they could do in our footlockers.
SAVAMA DCI, the organization my friend and colleague, Abdel Kader Haidara,
curator of the Mamma Haidara library, presides has digitized a couple
thousand manuscripts over the years. Because of the physical vulnerability
of the corpus (brittle linen rag paper, with highly unstable ferous inks
for the most part), standard scanning protocols cannot be applied because
the manuscripts literally burn when exposed to that kind of "hot light".
Cold circuit photographic based digitization is extremely time and resource
consuming as you can imagine. Character recognition in Arabic is another
serious issue that needs to be resolved for the digital solution to be
fully responsive in this corpus.
We think about the utlimate digital solution alot, Miles. Fantasize may be
a better term for what we do - the sheer volume of funding, technical
assistance to perfect it for this corpus, and the time needed to digitize
all of the manuscripts is pretty overwhelming and as I said, at this point,
we have about 30 days until it starts raining buckets in Mali and finding
enough money to secure the physical integrity of the corpus is our number
one priority for the time being.
Best,
Steph
-------
T160KTimbuktu Libraries in Exile Knowledge for Peace Initiative
731 Woodmont Beach Road South
Des Moines, Washington 98198 USA
Tel. +1 206 948 5882
and
Sébénincoro, Près du Pont Woyowayanko
Bamako, Republique du Mali
Tel. +223 76 43 89 06
"We have about 30 days until it starts raining buckets in Mali and finding enough money to secure the physical integrity of the corpus is our number one priority for the time being"
Hi Miles,
Thanks for your message. Tony Dowler is our campaign manager and guru. I'd like to get him into this conversation if you don't mind, and I'm copying Brian Mayer as he is a really important member of our team on this effort and I see him in the thread your inquiry came out of.
A couple of things about the subject -
right now, we are concentrating on ensuring the physical integrity of the evacuated manuscripts. they are jam packed in metal footlockers in an environment that is much, much more humid than their home in Timbuktu. We have seen signs of trauma and also of humidity based risk (molds, mildew, fungus). If we don't get the manus into individual boxes with humidity traps before the rainy season get going next month, we are very afraid that we will lose them as "wet" based issues spread like wildfire on shelves in libraries. you can imagine what they could do in our footlockers.
SAVAMA DCI, the organization my friend and colleague, Abdel Kader Haidara, curator of the Mamma Haidara library, presides has digitized a couple thousand manuscripts over the years. Because of the physical vulnerability of the corpus (brittle linen rag paper, with highly unstable ferous inks for the most part), standard scanning protocols cannot be applied because the manuscripts literally burn when exposed to that kind of "hot light". Cold circuit photographic based digitization is extremely time and resource consuming as you can imagine. Character recognition in Arabic is another serious issue that needs to be resolved for the digital solution to be fully responsive in this corpus.
We think about the utlimate digital solution alot, Miles. Fantasize may be a better term for what we do - the sheer volume of funding, technical assistance to perfect it for this corpus, and the time needed to digitize all of the manuscripts is pretty overwhelming and as I said, at this point, we have about 30 days until it starts raining buckets in Mali and finding enough money to secure the physical integrity of the corpus is our number one priority for the time being.
Best, Steph
------- T160K Timbuktu Libraries in Exile Knowledge for Peace Initiative
731 Woodmont Beach Road South Des Moines, Washington 98198 USA Tel. +1 206 948 5882 and Sébénincoro, Près du Pont Woyowayanko Bamako, Republique du Mali Tel. +223 76 43 89 06
Email: contactt160k@gmail.com URL: http://t160k.org/