Europeanа Foundation General Director Harry Verwayen visited the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) on Thursday. He was personally welcomed by BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, and toured the agency’s archives, library, reading room, and renovated newsroom.
Kiril Valchev and Desislava Sevova, head of BTA’s Archives and Reference Department, showed the guest where biographical files on Bulgarian figures are kept. These are organized alphabetically and include clippings from the press and BTA bulletins, Sevova explained. These files are used to prepare reference materials for birth and death anniversaries, which are needed by the agency’s departments.
The guest then visited the photo archive, where albums containing previews and descriptions of photographs are kept, arranged thematically.
Harry Verwayen also saw the reference card catalog, used for quick checks of the correct spelling of names of organizations, political parties, and official titles.
The Europeana General Director was particularly impressed by the microfiche archives. Between 1983 and 1999, parts of the BTA archive were transferred to microfiche, and the paper versions were not preserved. Due to outdated visualization equipment, access to microfiche content has been limited.
Finally, he was shown the storage for BTA’s photo negatives, which number around 2 million. Sevova explained how they are organized and that each film is accompanied by information about its contents, year of capture, film number, and the photographer’s name.
Harry Verwayen also visited BTA’s digitization center, where he showed great interest in how the Agency’s archives are being digitized. He then visited BTA’s reading room, where vistors can access the BTA archive.
Next, he toured the main archive storage, which houses the primary collection of bulletins. The first section contains BTA magazines. There, BTA Director General Valchev showed him the first issues of the LIK magazine, as well as some of the most recent issues of the now revived magazine.
This archive also holds BTA’s bulletins dating back to 1921. Over the years, the titles have changed according to the agency’s structural developments and currently total around 150. The complete collection comprises just over 10,000 volumes, explained Desislava Sevova.
Verwayen also visited the archive of the Reference Department, which was established in the 1930s and organizes information by topic into thematic dossiers. These are divided into an International Section, organized by country, and a Bulgaria Section, arranged by sector. Each dossier contains press clippings and BTA bulletins on a given topic from the 1950s onward.
In the special storage are kept the oldest and most valuable publications of BTA. This includes the earliest BTA bulletins, from the very first issued in 1898 up to 1920. On the opposite side are the oldest editions from the library’s collection, including early printed books, explained Desislava Sevova.
The agency’s library holds over 90,000 volumes of specialized literature – dictionaries, reference books, and rare editions, including books printed before Bulgaria’s Liberation.
The Agency marked its 127th anniversary this February with the opening of a dedicated archive reading room, its own custom typeface, and a refurbished news studio.
