During my time at the American University of Afghanistan, I was tasked with managing the library without any budget at all, and quickly built up a fairly extensive listing of resources of use to libraries with shoestring budgets.
This resource guide grew naturally out of the collection of bookmarks I used in my work cataloguing a private collection of rare books for a private collector in Edinburgh.
Given how expensive books can be, and knowing that I was going to be traveling after graduation, during college I avoided buying books that I didn’t anticipate needing to refer to after whichever class they were required for. In order to do this, I developed this resource guide.
Before I was offered the job at the American University of Afghanistan, I knew I wanted to work in an English-language university in a non-Anglophone country, so I assembled this listing.
I love languages, and language resources, so when I learned that several of my friends were going to be spending time in North Africa, I prepared this resource guide in the hopes that it might be useful.
Once I had decided to try and find work in Central Asia (a decision which ultimately led to my job at the American University of Afghanistan), I began aggressively researching languages of the region, and assembled this document for my own personal use.