Balgarianovinite.com A presentation on digital life for BTA’s archives covering the agency’s more than 125-year history was made at the 40th Media Innovation Network (MINDS) conference in Vienna on Thursday. The archives include millions of pages of news bulletins and hundreds of thousands of photographs, documenting important events in Bulgaria and around the world.
The 40th MINDS conference, held from April 22 to 24, focuses on the use of artificial intelligence, as well as other methods, models, and tools for maintaining an accurate, reliable, sustainable, and accessible information base. Attending the forum are representatives of leading news agencies from around the world, including BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, Secretary General Julia Sokolova, English Service Directorate Editor-in-Chief Kaloyan Kirilov, the head of the Digitization of BTA’s Specialized Archives and Reference Funds project, Svoboda Chorbadzhiyska-Todorova, and Dimitar Genev, the project’s system administrator.
At the forum, Chorbadzhiyska-Todorova and Genev presented the project through which BTA is digitizing its 125-year-old archives. It is part of a Culture Ministry project for the digitization of museum, library, and audiovisual funds, which the agency joined in 2021 within the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Work on BTA’s project, worth BGN 4 million, began in July 2023 with the delivery of four scanners and will continue until June 2026.
BTA’s strategic goal is to preserve, properly store, and digitize one of Bulgaria’s richest archives.
Forum participants were briefed on best practices and the main challenges faced by the project team during the digitization, such as digitizing content written in the old Bulgarian orthography, severely damaged pages, the quality of the photographs, and the lack of metadata for them.
Presented was the digitization of BTA’s first news bulletin from 1898, which contains information on the health of Princess Clementine (mother of Prince Ferdinand I), information on the stock markets in the Balkans, brief reports from European cities such as Vienna, Paris, and Istanbul, and news about upcoming duels in France and Austria-Hungary.
A team of 37 specialists have digitized 4.4 million pages out of a total of 5.3 million pages in the BTA’s historical archive and 644,000 images out of a total of 1.8 million images from the 1898-2012 period, thereby achieving the project’s objectives. The digitization work utilized best practices for digital archiving and the most reliable strategies to protect data from unexpected loss or damage. The project’s results include improved efficiency, increased public accessibility, preserved heritage, future integration with the online platform, as well as faster access to the BTA archives.
In Vienna, the Bulgarian News Agency also presented its idea to establish a BTA Institute, to which 15 organizations in Bulgaria working in the field of artificial intelligence would be invited. The goal is to develop freely accessible products that will first be implemented at BTA and then across all other media outlets. Digitization of BTA Archives Presented at 40th MINDS Conference 2026 THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-04-23 16:32:30 Latest news World news Country news Most important news latest news most important latest of the day Justice Petar Nizamov Feathers Petar Nizamov- Feathers Justice bg iustitia.bg iustitia iusticia usticia investigation Burgas Bulgaria news news of the last hour news of the day news of today Bulgaria news The news from Bulgaria blitz news top news most important most commented latest news Boyko Borisov news weather coronavirus news news weather facebook youtube facebook instagram news today news of the last minutes news today today news news bg news leading news hot news bg news site for news all news news bg news of the last hour latest latest news bg news of today news today news today news of the last hour latest news today news bg news news 24 hours news vesti bg novini news world bird bg bivol bg bivol trud bg novini latest news today novinite bg news hello bulgaria political party coat of arms delyan peevski scandalous Bulgarian National Television Free Europe Television scandal exclusive live tv live right now tv tv online tv program bg live now tv news online tv online live court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas court Burgas district court Burgas district court Burgas appellate court Burgas prosecutor Burgas prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Burgas district prosecutor’s office Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev Prosecutor Geshev Tsatsarov Ministry of Internal Affairs Burgas ODMR Burgas ODPR Burgas police Burgas district police Burgas prosecutor Tsatsarov SGS cases Varna court chairman of the SGS court decisions on civil cases decisions on cases Plovdiv court decision of the court decisions cases Varna court criminal cases district district court decisions work in the court SGS chairman of the SGS judges Sofia court post judges Plovdiv court Plovdiv judges Plovdiv Supreme Court Inspectorate Supreme Court Supreme Judicial Council lawyer lawyer criminal cases lawyer civil cases lawyer marriage cases lawyer administrative criminal law criminal process civil law civil process administrative law constitutional law