France Exchanges
Participants in the joint Bentley/École
National des Chartes seminar standing
at the entrances of the École in Paris
Over the past twenty years the Bentley has been involved in a number of projects and exchanges with the archives community of France. This began when Nancy Bartlett of the staff was selected to attend the Stage Technique Internationale d'Archives of the Archives de France in 1985. In 1992 Francis Blouin, William Wallach along with Ms. Bartlett conducted a two-session seminar with faculty members from the École nationale des Chartes, the Grand École in France for the preparation of archivists and records professionals. The focus of the seminar was the application of the principles of diplomatics to electronic records. The first session was held in Ann Arbor, the second in the summer of 1993 was held at the École in Paris. The results were published in the The American Archivist in Fall 1996 as a special issue on "Diplomatics and Special Records." The same content was published in French in the archival journal La Gazette des Archives in 1996. Since 1990, the library has hosted a student nearly every summer from the Institut Nationale du Patrimoine in Paris. Students have come for one or two months to study the American tradition in archival service.