site.btaAnadolu Agency President Karagoz Visits Bulgarian News Agency

The President and CEO of Turkiye’s national news agency, Anadolu Agency, Serdar Karagoz, visited the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) on Monday.

BTA’s Director General, Kiril Valchev, and the Director of the Archives and Reference Department, Desislava Sevova, showed the guest the renovated facilities where the agency’s archives and photo archive are kept. Karagoz also had the opportunity to see the negatives, the reading room, and the digitization process. In the main storage area, he viewed the bulletins and thematic dossiers. The hosts also showed him materials from 1923 related to the proclamation of Turkyie as a republic with Ankara as its capital.

Valchev and Sevova also presented boxes containing reference materials about Turkiye, including clippings from the periodical press, BTA bulletins, the first BTA bulletin, and the BTA library. Afterwards, the guest visited the multimedia center, the MaxiM hall, BTA’s National Press Club in Sofia, and the agency’s renovated newsroom.

Karagoz was impressed by the archive, the materials it holds, and the organization of the work. He also viewed the “then and now” photos displayed in the main archival storage, where BTA bulletins from 1921 and the thematic dossiers of the Reference Department are kept, expressing his admiration.

He was particularly impressed by photos from 1959. He also expressed his admiration for the extensive information that BTA has on Turkiye in its thematic dossiers.

BTA has established modern archive storage facilities equipped with advanced shelving systems and climate control, ensuring the long-term preservation of its records in compliance with Bulgarian archival standards.

New facilities have been developed for storing bulletins, thematic archives, the library, and the photo archive. The bulletin collection is divided between a main repository and a special storage facility. The main archive holds bulletins from 1921 onward, covering around 150 titles that have evolved over the years. The special storage facility preserves bulletins from 1898 to 1920, including the first bulletin handwritten by BTA’s first director, Oskar Iskender.

The special storage room also contains books published before 1878, along with rare editions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many featuring handwritten dedications. These volumes form part of BTA’s library, which has served as a depository since 1950. In 1952, the library contained 11,000 volumes; today, it houses approximately 90,000. The new library facility is now fully equipped to meet archival storage requirements.