To share the experience of developing processes for managing the internal documents of a national library – the Bibliothèque Nationale de France – in a country where records management is still not well known and rarely applied.
The initiative used the Design and Implementation of RecordKeeping Systems methodology. Its main aim was to ensure that best practice, as outlined in the ISO 15489 standard, was applied to the management of electronic documents just as best practice had been applied to managing paper documents for many years in the National Library of France. Particular requirements were to track the information essential to the managing the Library's affairs, to preserve evidence of it intellectual property rights and to promote the documents which could enable its history to be written
Highlights the importance of communication, training and using the knowledge and skills of a different specialist staff and the implications of new ways of working for Library staff. Considers future work.
Highlights the crucial role played by the Library's new president and chief executive officer in the success of the project.
This paper is a useful case study of implementing records management processes to manage an organisation's own electronic information where the organisation's purpose is the management of information, much of it published information.
