It is becoming increasingly clear that bacterial ribosome assembly is catalyzed by a variety of non-ribosomal factors. Newly characterized factors in bacterial ribosome biogenesis are broadly conserved and often indispensable proteins that can be classified either as chaperones facilitating assembly, or enzymes with ribosomal RNA- and ribosomal protein-modifying functions. Accumulating evidence indicates that the proteins Era, Obg, YjeQ, YlqF and RimM are chaperones which may be crucial to bacterial ribosome assembly, and therefore represent novel targets for modern antibacterial drug discovery. Ongoing work aimed at understanding ribosome biogenesis is expected to continue to yield additional factors crucial to this process, and provide new targets with drug discovery potential.