This book examines the use and re-use of digital archives in a unique manner, by combining theoretical and practical approaches to the contemporary digital archive. The book brings together a range of writers - specialising in media and cultural studies, contemporary art and art history, digital and networked culture, library and museum studies - to explore the cultural impact of digital archives. Several of the essays describe the process of constructing a digital archive as a specific case study ¿ in digitising a physical archive and designing a searchable digital database as the core of the digital archive. Other chapters explore the cultural significance of digital archives in more general theoretical terms. These considerations include: the specific properties of the digital archive; its similarities and differences to the traditional paper-based archive; the ethical decisions made in the design of an archive; and the potential for creative re-use of online archived materials.

John Potts is Professor of Media at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of A History of Charisma, The New Time and Space, Ideas in Time, Radio in Australia; and the editor of several books including The Future of Writing.

1. Introduction - John Potts.- PART ONE: MAKING A DIGITAL ARCHIVE.- 2. Making the Temporary Permanent: the Digital Archive - John Potts .-3. Digitisation & Imagination: Curating the Kaldor Public Art Projects Archive  -Alice Desmond.-4. Public Art and Education in the Age of Digital Archives - Ross Harley.- 5. The (After) Life of the Archive -  Scott East.-6. Hauntology: the Archive as Past and Future - Nicole Anderson.- PART TWO: THE DIGITAL ARCHIVE AND ITS EFFECTS.- 7. Preservation/Access/Reuse - audio visual collections in the digital age - Katrina Sedgwick.- 8. Archival Ethics after Benjamin - Sean Cubitt.- 9. Temporary Library, Archiving Digital Culture - Alessandro Ludovico.- 10. The Romance of Form - Julia Mant.- 11. Conclusions: Use & Re-Use - John Potts.