An Analysis of the Strategies Employed to Curate, Conserve and Digitize the Timbuktu Manuscripts

This paper briefly reviews the range of curatorial
interventions made to preserve and display the Timbuktu
Manuscripts. The government of South Africa and Mali collaborated
to preserve the manuscripts, and brief notes will be presented about
the value of archives in those specific spaces. The research initiatives
of the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project, based at the University of
Cape Town, feature prominently in the text. A brief overview of the
history of the archive will be presented and its preservation as a key
turning point in curating the intellectual history of the continent. The
strategies of preservation, curation, publication and digitization are
presented as complimentary interventions. Each materialization of the
manuscripts contributes something significant; the complexity of the
contribution is dependent primarily on the format of presentation.
This integrated reading of the manuscripts is presented as a means to
gain a more nuanced understanding of the past, which greatly
surpasses how much information would be gleaned from relying on a
single media format.