LOC: Islamic Manuscripts from Mali

The Islamic Manuscripts from Mali is a small but impressively documented digital collection features 22 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha in Timbuktu, Mali. While I will be focusing on the manuscript digitization, the website also includes links to relevant maps, photos, and other information regarding Mali culture.

Under Building the Digital Collection, the website provides administrative metadata about the collection. While the main page seems to imply that the owner and director of the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library, Abdel Kader Haidara, provided the digital scans, it appears that the Photoduplication Service of LOC actually went to Mali to microfilm the collection. It is explained that the microfilming was expressly for archival purposes. Then, the microfilm was digitized by LOC's Digital Scan Center. The archival version was scanned as color 300dpi TIFFs. The scanning bit-depth is not provided. In addition to the master files, JPEGs of both high- and low-quality and thumbnail GIFs were produced. Interestingly, as part of the donation agreement with Haidara, only the thumbnails and the low-quality JPEGs are available online.

The provided object metadata includes such descriptive elements as title, alternate title, author/creator, notes, LOC subject headings (e.g., Arabic calligraphy, Islamic manuscripts), language, repository, and the unique digital id and handle. The manuscripts are searchable by keyword (not particularly helpful unless one knows a specific title since they all share similar subject headings), or browse by title or subject.

As stated in the section on scanning specifications, the quality of the images isn't spectacular but they are still quite decent. For example, the image to the right is viewable at 523x750 pixels. It's clear that great care was taken in microfilming the manuscripts with good overhead lighting and a black background.

This online digitization project is for exhibition purposes. It probably was one of the project proposal's end goals for the manuscript microfilming. While it is possible to study the manuscripts closely with the online versions, I would suspect that a serious scholar of such cultural materials would also make a trip to LC or Timbuktu.