In an air-conditioned room on a quiet, tree-lined street in Mali's capital, Bamako, three young men sat at desks with cameras mounted overhead, picked up one page of parchment at a time from tall stacks at their left, clicked the shutter button and then reached for the next page. Click. Flash. Repeat.
The ancient Timbuktu manuscripts of Mali were back in the headlines following internet giant Google’s initiative to host a collection of them at an online gallery found at a page called Mali Magic, but the site doesn’t begin to tell the full story of the wealth of West Africa’s manuscripts that are found from the Atlantic to Lake Chad.