SEATTLE, WASHINGTON--When faced with a military crisis in Mali, librarians and archivists rescued more than 300,000 historic manuscripts from Timbuktu. The books and records were placed in metal boxes, but they are now showing signs of moisture damage. The crowd-funding campaign “Libraries in Exile” is raising funds for equipment and personnel to preserve Timbuktu’s libraries. “The purpose of this campaign is to fund the preservation effort required to store the manuscripts in an archival, moisture-resistant manner during their exile from Timbuktu. If physical harm from the current packing situation continues and if mold and mildew spread in the corpus due to increased humidity, the damage will be devastating,” reads a statement from the campaign.