We hope this will be a conversation you will join in too, essential libraries for reason because libraries have played a special role in many cultures for many years and i have had the privilege of working in challenged communities where libraries were lifelines for so many people. And with the library of congress we are extending our role in terms of being the largest libraries. How can we reach out in the book festival is part of that. The two books excuse me if i say this title many times. The badass librarians of timbuktu and the worlds most precious manuscript and im surprised the library of congress has a connection to the city of timbuktu in maui. In 2000 for the library of congress entered a cooperative agreement with a major library in timbuktu to make Available Online important manuscripts. We also put the manuscripts on tour. The first exposure of the badass librarians of timbuktu in the united states. Everyone here had an opportunity to see what was out there before it was a secret. We will talk about that. I know many of you have personal libraries. 35,000 books and growing. I have seen more books today. When you left your house. We sold it and moved to new york. We have an apartment the size of this table. 35,000 books dont fit that. They are awaiting the day of their resurrection. Packing my library. It is called an elegy. I wonder why i have quoted you. I always grew up among books, always considered myself a reader rather than a writer but before i get into that, if you will excuse me. We are talking about books. The idea of congress. Some few hundred kilometers here there isnt a concentration camp for children set up in texas where the children not only dont have access to books but many of them sexually abused. They sleep on cement floors and 6 of them already died. That is happening within the confines of this country. We can talk about books and the importance of books and the library of congress is a lighthouse of what we hope this country would one day become but right now this is happening. We wont be able to say during the nazi times, we didnt know so we know we are not doing anything about it. [applause] the second of your book, the history of reading is in paperback. It has different chapters about optics, Different Things are interesting but the chapter of what struck me in the Public Library realm was called forbidden reading. The photograph introduces that chapter, has an image of a woman who looks like shes probably a slave and is standing in front of accrued structure holding a book. The section, i will paraphrase it that centuries of dictators, slave owners and other illicit holders of power have always known, and illiterate crowd is the easiest tool. If you could not prevent people from learning to read, the next best recourse is to limit and it goes on to talk about instances of that so your book touches on that. The jihadists who took over timbuktu knew that they were taking over a city that was synonymous with culture on the continent, vibrant, secular and religious culture going back to the 14thcentury, thanks to the efforts of a handful of these librarians that had really recaptured its identity gathered from around the desert and placed in libraries, and reclaimed its identity as an intellectual capital. These were different books. The originally, originally they were produced by karen x schools. They were distributed in timbuktu, and in the next hundred, 300 years, you had a religious culture and secular culture, i write about manuscripts about music, about science, about medicine, about history, books that did not directly address god, human achievements outside. When they captured the city in 2012. They did not immediately declare war on the manuscripts, it was clear to librarians and everyone in the city that they would get around to destroying it. They saw it as a threat to their rule. You describe it so movingly. I was touched by what you can read, you want to know whether they will destroy these books. Go over the basic outline. Of the tale . The story . Yes. Immediately it wasnt clear they were after the manuscripts. They did quickly begin to destroy aspect of timbuktu culture. They destroyed shrines. They destroyed mostly they were attacking the shrines and mosques of the sufi culture of timbuktu which was anathema to the jihadists. It was clear they were going to go after them as well. The protagonist who came from a line of librarians going back hundreds of years with many manuscripts and was totally devoted to the written word. Took on the role of protector, to take these books, and libraries with money from the Ford Foundation or western european or middle eastern governments. And you move them out of the libraries where they are obvious targets. This is a couple months process that involves taking them in the middle of the night, finding friends willing to secrete the books. And this is where the manuscript remain for the first couple months. The jihadists war against culture, carrying out acts of violence, sharia justice. Things were heating up. Sometimes it is not safe to leave them in the city. And move them self across the desert. Innocently hiding inside trucks or jeeps, making massive smuggling operation over several months, which is in government hands and they would presumably be safe. The book relates how these ordinary fellows, teenagers, librarians ordinary people of timbuktu got together. They concoct into things. We have tshirts as librarians fight them for freedom. When the going gets tough. I knew i would get to dallas when the book came out. I was greeted by 30 librarians. They all had bad as librarian buttons on their shirts. I had a chance to meet the hero, and Honorary Degree and an operator by the way. He has played that up quite a bit. Not for personal gain but libraries. It is a fictional character. I dont think i ever met a meek librarian. Your character is heroic in so many ways but during the nazi occupation of paris, when the allies interred, nap as sister was a librarian with germans trying allies coming in, she ran around to the houses of germans who had borrowed books from her library. That is bad too. I am sure you have had experiences working with librarians in your career. In my high school, the High School Librarian was a tough guy, huge disciplinarian, big guy, most aggressive of the teachers at the school. I dont have any illusions that they dont go together in my mind. Tell us about the librarian, who had ordered the book so carefully he didnt want anyone to take the matter. It is so moving to see how librarians are essential to someones life. There are so many stories from writers and other people whose life is changed because of a librarian and the standing to relate to the past, to find our identity in literature and to learn empathy, to learn decency and civic responsibilities. And one of my favorite characters is riding the horse, an example of civil disobedience. The mother tells her to go to her grandmothers house and without that civil disobedience there would be no story, would be terribly boring. I never thought of little Red Riding Hood like that. I must say. Badass little Red Riding Hood. We all love to say that. With the great libraries, the Great Library of timbuktu, are you in touch with those people . I havent been back persons 2014 but they are coming out of the documentary film in the winter with the same title of course. Through the director who filmed, made the film still fully in timbuktu shot it on location which is an incredible achievement so i have gotten a feeling for the atmosphere which is still not good. Have not begun to return the books that the libraries are shutdown, no scholars, no people going up there. It has been that way for six years the jihadists were thrown out and when the director and his tiny camera crew went up there they had to arrange the United Nations transport because no flights are going in there, they got the help of the un in providing security, had to keep the entire plan clandestine and they wanted to recreate in the documentary the do it on location when warned the idea of a convoy of 100 vehicles flying blackie hottie flags. The documentary reenactment does not go down well with un peacekeepers in morocco. The whole situation remains in limbo and as far as i know, not a single library has opened, in storage waiting to be transported up the river by boat and i remember when i visited the country in 2008 when there were Something Like 45 libraries this desolate city it was truly desolate place coming off of a war completely cut off from the world. In 2008 largely on these libraries, thanks to opening up the Music Festival the place had been completely transformed into this cultural hub. You had scholars from germany from norway coming to see the manuscripts. Everybody, fringe to middle aged, americans on package tours coming up to see the library. A spectacular achievement and it is all of course gone but it was a window of four or five years. That is a National Loss and you worry about a personal loss, waiting to be resurrected. No. The situation was simply a bureaucratic mess and we had to leave france and pack the books but they are there. I hope i would be able to set them up again but life balance at the same time we were leaving the library, i was appointed director of the National Library of argentina so i had 40,000 books and inherited 10 million i must say, i suppose you share this, as director of the library, you read far less because you had two busy administrating, dealing with bureaucracy and trying to raise fundss. There are the books, tempting you realize how important. Going back to your badass librarians. We have so many examples of libraries being the center that holds society together and also heels society. In mexico there is an extraordinary phenomenon, maybe you know about this. Grassroots libraries that spring up especially in locations of violence and drug dealing and so on and many women who constitute 80 of the readers of this world and in their homes, set up reading groups and social communal library, not 40,000 books but more Important Library of maybe 20 or 30 books and people come, especially young people and this is extraordinary. The level of violence diminishes between 70 80 . This is what a library can do. That is where i think real librarians are the heartthrob of a civilized society. Just listening to this and thinking about the universality of libraries in the meaning they have across all societies, that hit home to me early in 2006 when he had been talking about what happened in timbuktu, it was the hub of the north. And it is 150 miles through godforsaken desert. This old guy beckoned this way and took me into a darkened shed and he opened the trunk and there is a pile of manuscripts dating back 500 years, instability, in the desert was a period. A should with a box. And there are pages fluttering away. One was a koran. I was looking at things no other westerner had seen for 600 years in the great mosque of mecca and others were secular volumes but you could see of all the things in this village this collection was what gave them meaning and hope and the history of the village, the history of the people in it, shared knowledge contained in this place. It hit me then, in whatever form, libraries in every culture are fundamental to that. There are societies that have an oral culture and for those societies the library is the memory of the editors and people responsible in the community but it is true for the societies of the book, the library holds not only the memory of that society but also the identity of its readers and if you want to know who you are, the library is there to tell you. The director of the library, the best information, the library is the place of evidence. If you want to understand false truth and lies in society in our time where a fact seems to have the same weight as an invented story, the library has the documents that will tell you we wont make up your mind for you but it is there. You can see it. Proponents of making sure voices from all different cultures are encouraged to be there. I remember my first, what is your Favorite Book . I say it is the book that brings a storefront in jamaica queens, i dont know what library put it in my hand but it was bright april. It was the first time i saw myself, an africanamerican girl with two pigtails and she was a brownie and i was a brownie and i love to read but i had never seen myself, when you say they are so important. And the book should be windows on the world. When you develop the libraries the diverse city, otherwise you rely on what is there with readers. And doesnt represent you into your own. Or black time will identify and a green gables into the hair of her hair color. A variety of authors and young people are reflected. Didnt need to do it. An opportunity for people to make some comments, we have a couple microphone, if people would come up, i hope you do. That chapter, for bidden reading. The experience in timbuktu, with a list of holders of power. A brief historical note. The king of england deciding, you can read your bible and an instruction to slave owners to teach that and the slaveowners in south carolina, the most virulently opposed to that and they decided anyone who taught a slave to read would be punished and would be flawed or have his or her fingers cut off and on the third try put to death and the strategies show me what you are doing and the kid would show them. I find it sorry. I find the microphone so moving. Frederick douglass talks about that in his autobiography. The famous saying once you learn to review will be forever free. When people say you are the 14th librarian of congress and the first female librarian so important but also the first person of color. I prepared for parts of these laws for my swearingin and list them all. And reminded gently by my mom it could be a downer and your swearing in, just saying how significant it is. The list was so long. Congratulations in the intention. The Authority Figures here, the digitization, it makes more things accessible to more people. It is in jeopardy. I dont read digital books. I use my computers and typewriter, but when i became the director of the library of argentina, my First Mission was first of all to digitize, and to digitize as many texts as we could for an equivalent Virtual Library of the holdings that we had because we relocated and when a series across country, we were the National Library of any argentinian and did have access to everything. It was very important. The holdings we have with the native communities of argentina were catalogued in the 19th century. Some are under indians and some are under savages. This needed to be recalled and i wanted to do this working with the leaders of native communities. It was incredibly complicated because we had no political power in argentina but what you are doing is digitizing those holdings as they do in canada and australia. They digitize the holding and send them back to the community and the community decides what can be read by whom and what these things are because in the 19th century they said this was a cup or Something Else so digitization for society is absolutely essential, equivalent at the time of gutenberg that i am a private citizen who is over 70 years old and i like my little routine and i still dont read digitized books. You would be heartened to see in the childrens stage and the teenage stage all the young people that are there, waiting to get their books signed and graphic novels so there is a book culture and physical culture as well. I would say in the case of the great the great libraries of timbuktu there is a difference in the age and condition of these books. Henry louis gates is up there in the late 90s and one of the first things he said was we have to start a Digitization Program, give you 1 million to do that, he built a physical library instead. He wanted the books on display, a bit of an egomaniac and people coming to see his book but things have changed. It is a combination. There is a recognition you have to digitize, a massive Digitization Program going on with hundreds of thousands of books but the books themselves are treasures, spectacular, beautiful books. The goldleaf and the designs and calligraphy are so fantastic that in itself the actual physical books, put a few of them on display, digitize everything, make some of them available, look at and appreciate in these physical libraries and have a balance, that is going on except there is no physical library right now. That is the hook. Im curious how you came about the story in the first place, how you found out the librarians were doing this effort but when you were there in 2014 what your experience was like. I was a bureau chief in africa for newsweek in the 90s and traveled all over the continent and that is when i discovered molly for the first time. An interesting place in a lot of ways. When i became a freelance writer a decade later, in 2006, about manuscript of molly and new effort being made to recover them from the desert, to preserve them. A lot of them were in a state of disrepair. I went up there in 2006, i met abdul for the first time, spent a week there and wrote a long piece for the smithsonian, kept going back to molly and timbuktu and in 2012 when the jihadists invaded the country my first thought was i wonder what is going to happen to these manuscripts. I had a hunch they were endangered. I had envisioned he would have planned Something Like taking them out in the desert and burying them. It wasnt until a year later in 2013 that i got back in touch and discovered what had been going on and that led to a magazine piece and he said he would be happy to tell me his own life story and we went ahead and did the book. In 2014 this was a year i visited in august, 5 months after the french chased the jihadists out of the north of molly and came back to do more research in the winter of 2014. It was a raw place, the jihadists had been there for a year, they created emotional damage and they were scattering around in the bush but i had to get to timbuktu to talk to people and find out what was going on. That involved some pretty hairraising trips through the desert hoping i wouldnt be waylaid and kidnapped over the past years. There were a couple of them. Almost all of them had been released, 2 or 3 were in g hardy camps for a decade. It definitely crossed my mind that i had a