ABSTRACT This paper examines the differences between archived material that was always a digital record and hard-copy archives that were subsequently digitised. It considers the rationales behind the digitisation of archives in established western democracies as digitised collections and ad-hoc files are made available online. It compares this with how the archives of regimes in the Middle East and North Africa that collapsed between 1990 and 2011 were digitised. Overt political expediency determined the circumstances under which documents were released and recalled from public view. It examines the digitisation of archival material after the wars in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and its political implications . Then it examines material that has always been digital: the record of social media exchanges on the day when Colonel Qaddafi was killed in Libya in October 2011 and how the archived digital form reflects the origins and purposes under which it was produced. In both cases the electronic format is not simply a question of ease of distribution, both have become a record because they were assembled for particular purposes. Like ‘traditional’ archived documents, they were never intended to satisfy the needs of later historians but they became a source by being brought together.

中文翻译：

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数字化、数字化和静态档案以及中东和北非的斗争

摘要 本文探讨了始终是数字记录的存档材料与随后被数字化的硬拷贝档案之间的差异。它考虑了西方民主国家档案数字化背后的基本原理，因为数字化馆藏和临时文件可以在线获取。它将这与 1990 年至 2011 年间崩溃的中东和北非政权档案数字化进行了比较。公开的政治权宜之计决定了文件在何种情况下从公众视野中发布和召回。它考察了 1991 年和 2003 年伊拉克战争后档案材料的数字化及其政治影响。然后它检查一直是数字化的材料：2011 年 10 月卡扎菲上校在利比亚遇害当天的社交媒体交流记录，以及存档的数字形式如何反映其制作的起源和目的。在这两种情况下，电子格式不仅仅是一个易于分发的问题，两者都已成为一种记录，因为它们是为特定目的而组装的。像“传统”存档文件一样，它们从来都不是为了满足后来历史学家的需要，而是通过汇集在一起​​成为了一个来源。