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The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
- mads 10y agohttps://xkcd.com/37/ https://xkcd.com/37/
- HillRat 10y agoIt's a terrible shame what happened to Mali -- until the collapse of Libya it was a stable, if terribly poor, democratic state. The return of militant Tuaregs (now armed with the weapons Qadhdhafi had outfitted them with as his personal militia) and the merging of al-Qai'da in the Maghreb with Algerian tribes created a fertile soil for extremist violence. Timbuktu was once a great center of learning and commerce, at the heart of a sophisticated West African empire. These neo-Kharijites have nothing but contempt for history.
- dagaci 10y agoWhat happened is also a warning. Hopefully the digitization process will be accelerated as a result. What is more surprising is how big the collection is (~500k is spoken of) yet how few of them have actually been translated and read.
- zgniatacz 10y agorecent talk at google https://youtu.be/Ag9OLc7I_YM https://youtu.be/Ag9OLc7I_YM
- jegoodwin3 10y agoOne of the first American novels was about Timbuktu (though fictional, as novels often are) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Algerine_Captive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Algerine_Captive
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y agoAren't novels fiction by definition?