ABES - Agence bibliographique de l'enseignement supérieur

ABES  - Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education - is a french public institution, located in Montpellier supervised by the Ministry for Higher Education Research, Innovation.

ABES was created in 1994 to implement Sudoc , collective catalogue of French academic libraries, and to manage the national cataloguing network. Sudoc covers the collections of 3800 member libraries (12 million bibliographic records) and plays a leading role in French higher education and research information system. 

ABES is also in charge of identification of all PhD Theses supported in France. Since 2007, ABES has been managing the national information system for digital theses (referencing, preservation, dissemination, access) in the aim of improving their visibility.

ABES offers several national databases to improve access to specific resources: Calames , catalogue specializing in manuscripts and archives ; theses.fr , search engine for theses and dissertations ; Bacon , Knowledge Base usefull for ILS and Discovery Tools ; IdRef , database for authority records.