site.btaBTA Presents Its "News on File: 1899-2023" Book at Apollonia Festival of Arts

A book presenting each of the 125 years since the establishment of the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) by one major domestic and international development was press-launched at the Apollonia Festival of Arts at the Sozopol Art Gallery on Friday.

The book, titled News on File: 1899-2023, is the third in a set marking the anniversary that BTA celebrated in 2023. The book was presented by BTA Director General Kiril Valchev; Panayot Denev, author and former BTA Director General; Desislava Sevova, head of the BTA Archives and Reference Service; and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) President Julian Revalski. 

The previous two books were Personal Stories, in which current and former staffers of the Agency shared their experiences, and History of BTA 1898-2023, written by Panayot Denev, who was BTA Director General between 1997 and 2002, and edited by Prof. Roumiana Preshlenova, PhD, Director of the Institute of Balkan Studies with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Preshlenova also acted as a consultant for the third and last book in the series, and Denev wrote the foreword.

BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said at the book launch that the selection of news to be featured in the publication was a challenge, as BTA's archive was missing significant events for a number of years. "One of the most interesting things about the book is that when some of these things happened in the state, they were not read by ordinary citizens, but by members of the Politburo. We know from history that even during the Bulgarian monarchy there was a newsletter only for those on a need-to-know basis," he explained.

Valchev pointed out that the publication contains the lessons of history and can serve as a useful aid for journalists, because if they read carefully, they will observe how "today's news becomes history tomorrow". He also noted that the agency's huge archive is currently being digitized, which should be completed by 2026.

Panayot Denev said that the book is "a monstrous piece of work", a huge effort that involved many contributors which selected the most significant news to be featured. He noted that the selection was made by young people who had to choose what was significant in years well before their time.

"In the book you will see a very small part of the BTA archive. This is just a sample of the agency's rich archive," said Desislava Sevova. She recalled that BTA is in the process of digitization of its reference and archive funds. To date, 6,000,000 pages from 1,529,000 newsletters have been scanned, which is about 25% of the entire archival newsletter fund. Out of a total of 2,500,000 photographs, 122,493 have been digitized". Sevova added that the entire newsletter fund up to 1968 and the photo archive from the 1952-1957 period have been fully digitized.

Prof. Roumiana Preshlenova from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences also worked on the publication. BAS President Julian Revalski noted that the institution's contribution was more modest compared to the efforts of the BTA team.

Revalski said that BTA is "like a child of BAS" because the Academy was created 29 years before the Agency.

BTA's General Director explained that, similarly to the LIK magazine, the volumes dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the Agency will be available not only in printed format, but also as PDF files on the Agency's website.