France
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Country Profile for France
Legislative and organisational background
Within the French Ministry of culture, the Directorate of Archives [1] monitors the public archives other than those of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence. It is in charge of making regulations on archives and giving technical advice on appraisal, private archives, buildings, paper and digital preservation, digitization, archival websites, etc.
The network of public archives is made of: - archives within the ministries (most of the heads of these services belong to the Directorate of Archives) - 3 centres of National Archives [2] : Paris and Fontainebleau (archives of the Government), Aix-en-Provence (archives of former French colonies), Roubaix (archives of trade unions, companies, associations...) - 26 regional centres - 100 departmental centres - around 500 municipal centres
The departmental archives are in charge of monitoring all public archives at a local level on behalf of the Directorate of Archives.
The service for digital preservation at the National Archives was created in 1978. It holds data extracted from about 250 applications, mainly databases. Most of them are statistical databases, but also mail registers. The general census of 1999 represents 14 TB.
Management of databases
Overview of database management regulations in your country. Relevant guidelines and tools in use should be mentioned as well as available best-practice reports.
Electronic Records Management Systems
Overview of ERMS oriented regulations and guidelines, national and international metadata standards in use, supervisory and certification issues. If possible, main problems in applying guidelines and standards could be mentioned.
Ingest and pre-ingest in general
This section should deliver a basic understanding on the pre-ingest and ingest workflow. The timeline for separate tasks as well as responsibilities (which tasks are done in agencies and which at the National Archives) could be addressed.
Pre-ingest actions for datasets
A more in-depth technical description of the pre-ingest workflow for datasets and an overview of the tools and standards used (both for archival formats and metadata) should go here. If different approaches are used for different datasets (statistical data, national datasets, personnel and accounting databases) this could also be addressed briefly.
Pre-ingest actions for ERM systems
A technical overview of tools and methods regarding the preparation of transfer of records to the archives. Possible issues are archival file formats (if dealt with in agencies), requirements for metadata, mandatory functionality in ERM systems etc.
Transfer to archives
In addition to general regulations relating to archives, the transfer of digital records to archives is ruled by specific regulations:
- the exchange standard for archiving [3], which defines the XML transfer form for digital records. This standard is available in English.
- the list of file formats recommended for long-term preservation
Both are part of the French general interoperability framework (Référentiel général d'interopérabilité) [4], still under processing.
Ingest actions for datasets
An overview of the SIP to AIP conversion process. This section should mostly describe issues like generating the archival description for datasets, normalisation and validation, tools used and future plans.
If appropriate the process for initiating a retransfer could be mentioned
Ingest actions for electronic records
An overview of the SIP to AIP conversion process for electronic records originating from ERM systems. Normalisation of files, metadata conversions and the tools used could be some issues to explain.
If appropriate the process for initiating a retransfer could be mentioned.
Other comments and remarks
This is a section for additional comments and remarks, if needed.
References
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