From January 1 Bulgaria takes over the rotational presidency of the Council of the EU. Within 6 months, the country will be the initiator of a number of forums that are of common interest to the EU countries. One such event is a meeting of heads of EU Member States' archives, organized by the Bulgarian Archives State Agency, scheduled for June 5 and 6, 2018.

Especially for the forum the hosts have prepared several luxurious editions presenting the most valuable documents from the Bulgarian state archives. The books will be presented to the representatives of EU archival institutions. A video showing documents and photos has also been created and voiced by popular folk singer Valya Balkanska. "I think this is a good business card for the Agency and for this country," Prof. Mihail Gruev, head of the Archives State Agency says.

Among the highlights of the meeting were protection of personal data and the discussion of a code of ethics for archival workers to guarantee the interests of third parties. Prof. Gruev pointed out that this was a worldwide problem, as archives around the world collect a huge amount of information and this naturally creates opportunities for misuse of personal data. Another important focus was placed on electronic archiving:

"This is a huge challenge for all archives around the world. I have to admit that more developed archival systems are far ahead of us. Electronic archiving is not just a Bulgarian issue. In a sense, it is European and a global one. Together with the state e-government agency, we have been working on the gradual introduction of fully electronic archiving in state institutions. There is a decision by the government that in November 2018 the state registries must become fully electronic. This automatically raises the question what to do with documents used now that need to be archived. Here is the place to distinguish digitization from electronic archiving. Digitization covers documents whose originals are on paper and electronic archiving refers to documents that will be created in electronic way and will not have a paper equivalent at all. They will be archived in the form in which they were created. Through digitization, we try to protect documents by reducing the use of paper originals and from now on, after the digitization of a document, its original will only be used in photo books or exhibitions."

Among the new documents in the funds of the State Archives Agency are documents from famous researcher of poet Hristo Botev - Ivan Klincharov, donated by his grandchildren Susanna Klincharova and Ivan Klincharov. Among them are the original of Hristo Botev's letter that was previously considered lost and the business card of Radetzky captain Dagobert Engländer. Another extremely valuable donation is the documents of Prof. Viden Tabakov - Professor of Space Studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA. According to Prof. Gruev, professor Tabakov was an extremely interesting person about whom we do not even know he took part in the preparation of the historical space flight to the moon.

English: Alexander Markov