On 10 October Bulgarian archivists marked their professional day. The state repositories were set up 64 years ago. „It won't be an exaggeration to say that we keep the documental memory of the nation”, Associate Prof. Dr Mihail Gruev, Chairman of Archives State Agency said in an interview for Radio Bulgaria:

„In practice we keep the most valuable documents from the dawn of Bulgarian statehood after the Liberation from Ottoman rule in 1878. Of course, we also have available earlier documents but systematic collections date back to that time. Besides, we keep the archives of central government and other institutions, a range of private archives of prominent Bulgarian politicians and opinion leaders, brainworkers and men of letters, science and art.”

One of the most impressive private posessions is the collection of Dr Simeon Simov with ancient maps and books collected with great dedication in various countries. Artists including Sirak Skitnik, Bencho Obreshkov, Vasil Stoilov and other great minds have bestowed their works to the State Archives. They keep for instance, the collection of Bistra Vinarova, one of Bulgaria's foremost expressionist artists. All this though is only a fraction of the cultural wealth that the Agency is in charge of.

„I would point to a new arrival: the recently documented archives of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha”, Mihail Gruev goes on to say. “In fact the archives in a way duplicate the archives of the Monarchic Institute because they contain documents of his grandfather Tsar Ferdinand and his father Tsar Boris III, plus his own documents. We have been assured by Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha that these archives will be complemented with further items that he owns.”

On the occasion of the professional day of archivists famous politician and public figure Ginio Ganev donated to the agency the personal archives of his father-in-law Kimon Georgiev, a controversial though influential politician in Bulgarian history. The archives are huge: they measure some 6 lineal meters of arranged sheets. By the way this is the kind of metrics archivists use. Ginio Ganev has surprised them with another donation: an album with photos from the 1934 visit to Bulgaria of Serbian King Alexander I Karadordevic. 

How far has digitalization of this veritable wealth gone already?

„This is an issue, and it is an issue that troubles archivists across the world. We have an information system accessible for consumers in an electronic way. Documents that have been digitalized are provided to users in their digital versions. Unfortunately, we are at the start of this long process. We have 120,000 digitalized pages. Of course we try to be selective accounting for the importance of collections but it is quite clear the process will be long. For the time being we have below one percent of Bulgaria's archives digitalized. The most advanced countries have about eight percent. We try to perform better but it is up to financing. On the surface scanning the document is easy. But the next stage includes the addition of the so-called meta-data - the archeographic description of the document that requires time and human resources. So the process is long and we are at the very start of it.”

One more thing: the Archives State Agency has signed an agreement with the Bulgaria branch of Samsung with the purpose of assisting digitalization of archival collections. In this way digitalized documents for example, are going to assist training in history, literature and the arts at school.

 
English Daniela Konstantinova