Abdelaziz Abid served as Secretary-General of the National Library of Tunisia before joining UNESCO in 1976 as a UNESCO expert for the UNDP-funded School of Information Science (ESI) project in Rabat, Morocco, where he spent 9 years as teacher and then Head of Department (Directeur des études).
He joined UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in 1985 where he was in charge of library development projects and access to scientific information in developing countries. In 1988 he organized the feasibility studies and the international architectural competition for the Library of Alexandria, Egypt. He founded in 1992 the "Memory of the World" Programme. He retired from UNESCO in August 2OO7 and is now an independent consultant, currently coordinating UNESCO's contribution to the World Digital Library project.
He was granted the IFLA medal in Durban in August 2007 in recognition of his role in promoting the development of library services in developing countries and UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme.
He has contributed many publications in Arabic, English, French and Spanish on library development, information literacy, library education, access to scientific information, and preservation of, and access to, documentary and digital heritage.
