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The archives of the Ministère des armées

The Ministère des Armées is the custodian of a rich and diverse cultural patrimony: monuments, sites and necropolises, museums and halls of honor as well as their collections, archives and libraries.

What is the DPMA ?

The Direction des patrimoines, de la mémoire et des archives (DPMA) is in charge to define and to implement the cultural policy of the Ministry. It ensures the policy of animation and promotion of all of theses patrimonies through scientific and technical control, imspection and advice missions.


What is the Service Historique de la Défense (SHD) ?

Attached to the director of the DPMA, the SHD is a service with a national competence responsible for implementing the ministerial archives policy determined by the DPMA. He is responsible for the collection, conservation and communication of archival holdings in the defense sector, on paper and electronic media.

The SHD also manages a rich patrimonial library in military history; he is also the benchmark operator of the "history" function of the ministry and of the "symbolism" of the Ministère des Armées.

The SHD is spread over ten metropolitan areas: Vincennes, Pau, Châtellerault, Cherbourg, Brest, Lorient, Rochefort, Toulon, Le Blanc et Caen.

 

What is the Etablissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD) ?

Located at Fort d'Ivry (Val-de-Marne), ECPAD conserves the audiovisual and photographic collections of the ministry. A public administrative establishment placed under the supervision of the Délégation à l'information et à la communication de la Défense (DICOD), ECPAD is both an audiovisual production center and an archive service. The collections it maintains represent 13.5 million photographs and 38,000 films.

The archives network of the Ministère des armées

The archive network of the Ministère des Armées also has 17 intermediate archive services. Intermediate archives consist of documents which are no longer used daily in the processing of cases but which cannot yet, due to their administrative interest, be the subject of a selection for elimination or for final archiving.