Title Bibliographie nationale française
Web site address http://bibliographienationale.bnf.fr/ 
Start date Began 1811 for books, 1946 for serials, 1946 for printed music, 1948 for maps and 1983 for audiovisual material
Period covered 1811 to date for books, 1946 to date for serials, 1946 to date for printed music, 1948 to date for maps and 1983 to date for audiovisual material
Current size

At the end of 2009 :
– printed books 1,569164 (since 1970), 
– serials : 216,628 (since 1960),
– audiovisual material  616,487 (since 1983),
– printed music : 136,493 (since 1990),
– maps : 55,346 (since 1987) 

The statistics for the production of new records during the latest four years are available on the BnF web site: http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/anx_depot_legal/a.dl_stats_biblio.html Thanks Thanks to retrospective conversions, all bibliographic records produced for each type of material received by legal deposit before the computerization of the national bibliography are included in the BnF general catalogue: http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ . But unfortunately, there is no criteria defined in this catalogue to limit the search to the national bibliography records. Search by national bibliography number is only possible.

Media covered Printed books and serials, printed music, maps, audiovisual material (sound recordings, videos, computer games …)
General selection criteria The Bibliographie nationale française includes material published, printed and distributed in France, according to the legal deposit Act. For the legal deposit Act, see :http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/depot_legal_definition/i.depot_legal_loi/s.depot_legal_loi_code.html?
Selection criteria for digital resources All physical media are subject to legal deposit and subsequently described in the National Bibliography after deposit by publishers, printers or producers to the National Library. Online publications are also subject to legal deposit since 2006 (see http://www.bnf.fr/en/professionals/digital_legal_deposit.html ) but are collected by the National Library by means of sampling and web harvesting. Permissions from the publishers are not required and bulk harvesting of the national domain means a significant change in the scale of data management. There is therefore neither individual nor systematic description of these resources and they are not in the scope of the National Bibliography. Search engines (full text and by URL) are the only way to access the web archives derived from legal deposit.
Exclusions policies applied Not collected by legal deposit, and consequently not recorded in the national bibliography: handwriting exercise books, electoral material (as mentioned in the articles R26, R29 and R30 of the electoral law), imported documents with a print run below 100, products the main part of which is a non documentary object (scale model, doll, piece of porcelain, …), collection of photocopies or of press cuttings, identically reprints, non published dissertations, jobbing works, commercial or administrative printings.Collected by legal deposit but not recorded in the national bibliography: published past examination papers, printed train timetables, some textbooks. These documents are arranged and described as "collections" because it does not make sense to describe them individually according to their presentation or content. Records describing such collections are not published in the national bibliography.
Primary organisation responsible for national bibliographic control The Bibliothèque nationale de France is the national bibliographic agency for France. More precisely, the Département de l’information bibliographique et numérique is responsible for the coordination of the national bibliography production, for the online final publication and for the dissemination of bibliographic products. 4 BnF departments receive material according to the legal deposit and produce records for the national bibliography : Département du depot legal, (for printed books and serials), Département de la musique (for printed music), Département des cartes et plans (for cartographic material) et Département de l’audiovisuel (for audiovisual material).
Web site address of national bibliographic agency Access to the national bibliography from the BnF home page:http://www.bnf.fr  
Direct access to the national bibliography:http://bibliographienationale.bnf.fr/ 
Access to the products and bibliographic services (mainly based on the national bibliography): http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/produits_et_services_bibliographiques.html Access Access to indexing and cataloguing policy (established for the general catalogue which includes the national bibliography: http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/catalogage_indexation.html)
Co-operative structures or  relationships supporting the production of the national bibliography A legal deposit network exists: BnF is entitled to collect materials from publishers on a national basis, and in addition, 22 libraries are entitled to collect materials from printers (for books and serials) on a regional basis. Exhaustiveness of the legal deposit for printed material is realized thanks to continuous cross control between the 2 flows. See http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/depot_legal_definition/s.depot_legal_organisation.html For For the production of records for the national bibliography there is currently no national network.  The France ISSN Center is hosted by BnF and a very close cooperation exists for the production of national bibliography for serials.  BnF is responsible for the assignment of ISBN to a part of French official publications.
Single integrated or multiple categorised bibliographies A single national bibliography exists which covers all type of materials. But this bibliography is composed of 5 parts, one for each type of material:
– Livres [printed books] : fortnightly
– Publications en série [printed serials] : monthly
– Musique [printed music] : 3 issues per year
– Cartographie [cartographic material] : yearly
– Audiovisuel [audiovisual material] : bimonthly
Sources of bibliographic metadata used to produce national bibliography Data is created in-house. Records are first created in the BnF general catalogue (http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ ), and then are extracted to be published in the national bibliography (http://bibliographienationale.bnf.fr/). Each part of the national bibliography (for each type of material) has its own arrangement and indexes.  Since 2010 publishers are invited to make their legal deposit declaration online (http://depotlegal.bnf.fr/), and some data collected by this way is now re-used for cataloguing purposes in the BnF catalogue general. But we are at the very beginning of the process and no data produced by publishers is directly incorporated into the national bibliography. 
Relationship to national legal deposit legislation or voluntary deposit arrangements All material included in the Bibliographie nationale française is received by BnF under national legal deposit arrangements.
Relationship to national Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) programme No CIP programme in France.
Media & format options The bibliographie nationale française is available on line at http://bibliographienationale.bnf.fr/  
Access options to national bibliographic metadata Records from the national bibliography are disseminated both in INTERMARC (in-house format) and UNIMARC (national exchange format), with ISO 5426 or UTF8 for encoding characters. Each client has to specify his/her preferred characteristics.see : http://www.bnf.fr/en/professionals/current_and_retrospective_products/i.prod_current/s.prod_bibnatfra_eng.htmlDelivery Delivery is made by CD-ROM or by FTP.  All records are also available from BnF general catalogue (http://catalogue.bnf.fr/) but there is no criteria defined in these catalogues to limit the search to the national bibliography records.  Only the national bibliography identifier of each record is searchable (field 015 in INTERMARC and field 020 in UNIMARC). Records can be downloaded free of charge. see :http://www.bnf.fr/en/professionals/online_bibliographic_record_transfer/s.technical_record_transfer.html In In the OAI repository defined for the BnF catalogue (http://catoai.bnf.fr/oai2/OAIHandler?verb=Identify), sets are defined for each part of the national bibliography.
Metadata enhancements offered via online services No
Web 2.0 services offered No
Frequency of service updates Issues of the current national bibliography are regularly updated, but frequency differs according to the media concerned:
– Fortnightly for printed books
– Monthly for printed serials
– Bimonthly for audiovisual material
– Quaterly for printed music
– Biannual for maps 
Also, an annual cumulation is offered for each media see : http://bibliographienationale.bnf.fr/
Target audiences for services Academic/public libraries, booksellers, database providers, library softwares vendors, collecting societies, European projects, research teams, etc.
Uses made of  services offered Derived cataloguing, retrospective conversion, control of quality or updating for database providers and libraries.
Pricing policy for national bibliographic services Currently the national bibliography is operating:
– on a free basis for French libraries.
– on cost recovery for commercial companies. 
A new commercial policy is under consideration (and probably will be put into practice starting from 2011) especially for commercial companies.
Availability of metadata for re-use Bibliographic data usage conditions:
– any physical or moral person taking from the BnF bibliographic records as they are extracted from its databases, can freely use them, adapt them, modify them and distribute them as far as they are included in a value added derived product or service;
– in return of this free usage, the taker commits himself to permanently store in the computer record, the reference of the source, which means the content of the 001 field of the BnF record in the adequate field of the target format (i.e. the 035 field in Unimarc).
The transfer to a third party of bibliographic records as taken from the BnF, which means before changes made by the user within a value added product or service, is forbidden. See: http://www.bnf.fr/en/professionals/online_bibliographic_record_transfer/s.technical_record_transfer.html
Metadata formats In-house format is INTERMARC: see http://www.bnf.fr/en/professionals/intermarc_format_eng/i.intermarc_a_eng/s.intermarc_a_presentation_eng.html Bibliographic Bibliographic records are exported on demand either in INTERMARC or in UNIMARC.  For UNIMARC see: http://www.bnf.fr/en/professionals/how_to_better_use_bibligraphic_p_and_s/a.unimarc_format_eng.html In In the OAI-CAT repository, records are available in non simplified Dublin Core. See the following document which is unfortunately only available in French. see: http://bibnum/oai/GuideOAI_2008_09_08.pdf
Cataloguing code National cataloguing rules are those established by AFNOR (Association Française de Normalisation = French association for standardisation). They are fully compatible with ISBD.
Levels of description offered Complete ISBD.
Subject standards DDC, RAMEAU (Répertoire d’autorité-matière encyclopédique et alphabétique unifié). See the RAMEAU indexation guide on line: http://guiderameau.bnf.fr/
Name authority standards AFNOR rules define form and structure of access points. But the detailed content of the French authority file is mainly defined by the in-house format for authority records: INTERMARC/A  and in the online Cataloguer’s guide: see: http://guideducatalogueur.bnf.fr/
Is NBA affiliated to IFLA SC? Yes, BnF/Bibliographic and digital information Department has representatives in IFLA Bibliography Section, Cataloguing Section, Classification and Indexing Section