ABES – the Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education: its role in the resource sharing of documents in French universities and in document supply

This paper seeks to describe the role and the development of the French bibliographic agency, ABES. More generally, it aims to describe the state of bibliographic and document supply developments in France and possible futures.

The paper is descriptive in nature.

The findings of the paper are that it is necessary to reduce the ILL failure rate, to reduce supply times, to capitalise on the streamlining of document supply, to improve the quality of supply, and to harmonise terms and conditions.

The paper is written by an authoritative figure in the French library network. It will be relevant to all those interested in developments in document supply and bibliographic organisation in France.