Managing Library Wealth
The Ministry of Culture supports the digitization of library heritage collections and encourages the dissemination of good practices in digitization and digital preservation.
The Book and Reading Service (SLL) promotes the development of collective catalogues and network cataloguing. It supports standardization in the bibliographic and documentary fields.
It promotes the development of national collective catalogues such as the collective catalogue of France (CCFr). It now provides access in its "Patrimoine" database to nearly 9 million heritage print records from municipal or specialized libraries as well as records from the "Patrimoine musical en régions - RISM France" program. The «Manuscripts» interface brings together the computerized records of the general catalogue of manuscripts (CGM) and the PALME database of 20th century literary manuscripts.
SLL encourages the development of regional portals dedicated to heritage, or heritage aspects (reporting and valuation) of these portals (cf. OPER sheets).
In 2019, in close collaboration with the National Library of France, the national heritage fund reporting plan of territorial libraries. This plan, developed in each region by the DRAC with the operational support of the Structures régionales pour le livre (SRL) results from the results of the national survey conducted by the Book and Reading Service in the summer of 2017. This plan benefits from the provision by the BnF of a tool for cataloguing in EAD the collections of manuscripts and archives of territorial libraries (TAPIR).
It subsidizes and supports the work of AFNOR in document standardization (GC46: Information and Documentation) , notably those of its national commissions CN357 (modelling, description and access to the document), CN4 (technical interoperability) and CN6 (numbering and identification). In the field of heritage, groups of experts from CN357 have worked or are working on the development of the following standards, standards or recommendations: DeMArch (description of modern and contemporary manuscripts and archival documents), EAD (Encoded Archival Description), EAC-CPF (Records d'Autorités Personnes-Familles-Collectivités dans le contexte archivistique), and the revision of the standard "livre ancien (imprimé)" (Z44-074).
The SLL recommends the use of the cataloguing format for compiling and feeding catalogues of libraries belonging to local authorities UNIMARC, of material indexation BRANCH, and recovery by transfer of bibliographic records and authorities from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
The Ministry of Culture wanted to publish a Guide to Managing Heritage Documents in Territorial Libraries to accompany the revision of Book III of the Heritage Code. Within this code, Book III is devoted to libraries. After the renovation of the legislative part of book III in 2017, decree no. 2020-195 of 4 March 2020 updated the regulatory part.
The Guide to Managing Heritage Documents in Territorial Libraries is designed as a practical vade-mecum, intended to clarify and complete this regulatory package, for the heritage activity of territorial libraries.
The result of the collective work of an interdepartmental working group, a first version of this guide was presented and discussed in thematic workshops during the 15emes Written heritage days held in Compiègne on 26 and 27 June 2019. At the end of these first returns, a second version was established in October 2019 and submitted for opinion to the association Bibliopat and the Fédération interrégionale du livre et de la lecture (FILL).
This guide was updated in October 2021, presenting in particular the procedures for the decommissioning of heritage documents belonging to the State and deposited in libraries of local authorities.
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