In the basement of the National Library of Tunis, conservator Hasna Gabsi combs through shelves of newspapers dating back to the mid-19th century to select the latest to digitise. She picks out a yellowed copy of an Arabic-language newspaper printed in the 1880s, then walks to the sections containing French, Italian, Maltese and Spanish-language newspapers published in Tunisia. "The archive is a witness to an important, historical culture," Gabsi said under the flickering neon lights. The library's collection includes some 16,000 titles printed in Tunisia -- numbering hundreds of thousands of editions of newspapers and periodicals. As part of a campaign to preserve the country's archives, the library staff have been working to digitise the documents. Most of the newspapers are in Arabic, with the oldest from the mid-19th century when Tunisia was an Ottoman province. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES ARRANGED IN SEQUENCES N°327T2HU