site.btaBTA Archives Digitization Team Offered Work at Agency after Project's End

The team of 37 employees working on the project "Digitization of the Specialised Archive and Reference Collections of the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA)" will continue their professional development at the Agency after the project's completion in April 2026, said BTA Director General Kiril Valchev at a BTA-hosted meeting here on Wednesday.

The meeting on "The Digitization Unit Team – Future at BTA" was initiated by project manager Svoboda Todorova, with the digitization activity coordinator Nora Konstantinova as moderator. The forum presented career development opportunities for employees in the Ministry of Culture's project "Digitization of Museum, Library and Audiovisual Collections" within the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The directors of the various information programmes, BTA Deputy Director General Evgenia Drumeva, as well as employees from the photo archives, Studio BTA and LIK magazine took part in the forum.  

Another highlight was the professional qualifications of the team involved in digitizing analogue archives – bulletins, microfiches and photo archives. Twenty-five members of the project team are students from various higher education institutions in Sofia. "Thanks to your efforts, we have made exceptional progress in preserving Bulgaria's memory. Millions of pages of news and photos that tell the story of the country day by day pass through your hands," BTA Director General Kiril Valchev told the team. He announced that so far, 75% of the paper bulletins (nearly 2.8 million pages), 84% of the microfiches (770,000 pages) and 62% of the photo archive (about 400,000 photos) have been digitized. It is expected that by the end of the project, nearly 5 million pages and 650,000 photographs will have been processed. 

"The work related to the archives will continue after the project is completed," Valchev underscored. He noted that the digital materials will be available for use both on site in the BTA Hub and remotely to academics, students and anyone else who is interested. The Director General pointed out that digitization supports the work of other departments in the BTA by facilitating the search for archival materials and content for publications.