I recently found out that a Malian conservator had been learning
conservation at the British Library because in Mali there are large
collections of ancient manuscripts:

http://www.sum.uio.no/timbuktu/index.html

These manuscripts many dating from the 1400s have been passed from
generation to generation and some have been donated to a conservation
center.

--- In themagicallibrary@yahoogroups.com, giraffe120 wrote:
> One day some lady brought in an Islamic book from 13th or 14th
> century. Certainly the oldest book I ever held. I perhaps should of
> written the info about it down because I talked about it alot at the
> time, and didnt think that eventually I would get hazy on details.
> But it was from that area Dogon tribe/ Timbuktu area. That was
> my first introduction to the idea of books from there.