Day 10
We met a bit later today (10am) since it is still the weekend and wanted to let the IT Team (Khalid, Youssef, and Mohammed to get some rest over their break.
We expected a relatively slow day–which it turned out to be– of printing books and ironing out bugs. We found out a bit later the almost-mythical Director of the Library– Dr. Seregaldine would be coming to take a look at the station. The Director was a former higher-up in the World Bank, speaks more languages than there are days of the week, and has earned Ph.D.s in more than one field, in addition to the honorary Ph.D.’s that universities around the world have given him.
We kept hearing that he was on his way down (the library’s office space is a conceptual pyramid of heirarchy, with the most important and most modern departments (eg Information & Computing Technology on the 3rd of 4 floors) on the top, working down to the most traditional departments (eg rare manuscripts in one of the ‘basements’).
After about 4 hours of waiting the Director swept into the room with a couple assistants, the head librarian, and the director of ICT in tow. He was really thrilled with the setup and promised to find money for the mobile unit’s vehicle. He described the setup as “fabulous” and commented that “the dream [of printing books from digital copies which Brewster had spoken about at the Library in October] has become a reality”.