site.btaBTA Director General Valchev: Preserving Today's News for Tomorrow Helps Mutual Understanding Worldwide

"Peace should result from more information about each other, not from war," BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said here on Wednesday, addressing a scientific conference on "Cultural Heritage in the Digital Era". The event was organized by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' Prof. Alexander Fol Institute of Balkan Studies with Centre for Thracology (IB&CTh) and took place at the Academy's Ivan Geshov Hall.

Valchev stressed the greatest responsibility of news agencies: to enable mutual understanding of people worldwide. "To know one another and compare ourselves doesn't just imply using best practices, it also guarantees peace. We may disagree, but we must respect each other and find ways to coexist without wars," the BTA head stressed.

In his words, part of that responsibility is to make sure that today's news does not perish but is preserved for tomorrow. "That is why we learn from the Latin dictum that the previous day should be the teacher for the next. Hence, yesterday's news is today's lesson and tomorrow's memory," he pointed out.

Valchev noted that BTA's archives include approximately 5.3 million pages of paper news bulletins and magazines (including BTA's magazines), nearly 1 million bulletins on microfiche, approximately 1.8 million file photos, and a subject archive of the Reference Information Department. This archive is organized in archive units containing press clippings and excerpts from the BTA services on significant topics and individuals from Bulgaria and the rest of the world, as well as data about countries worldwide.

He explained that the subject archive started to be built back in 1934 and has been systematically organized by sector since 1950. It is used in preparing BTA news stories and compiling backgrounders and explainers. The archive is housed in about 5,000 boxes, each holding between 500 and 1,000 paper publications, totaling over 500,000 subject folders and over 250,000 card files.

"When these materials were created, they were news. Today they are a memory of yesterday and a priceless source of history. They also serve as a lesson for us today. We are therefore responsible for then in several aspects. First of all, for their physical preservation," Valchev said.

Over the past four years, BTA has made significant efforts to create proper conditions for storing paper bulletins and photos from the period until 2000.

"Previously, paper bulletins were stored in the attic of BTA's building, constructed in the early 1960s. They were kept on cement floors or in dusty wooden shelves, exposed to cold in winter and heat in summer. The ceiling of the attic was so low that one could barely move through it crawling. Access was difficult, and organization was sloppy. As from the beginning of this year, the entire paper archive was moved to newly equipped premises that used to house BTA's staff cafeteria. The archives are now arranged in state-of-the-art cabinets with a regulated microclimate. Millions of photos, until recently stored on a premise without climate control, have also been relocated and arranged on new shelves in air-conditioned rooms. For digital text and image content from the 21st century, BTA has secured new disk storage space and dual backups at two separate data centres of the state systems integrator, Information Services," the Director General explained.

Valchev singled out digitization as the second focus. Exactly two years ago in July, BTA launched a digitization project for its paper bulletins and photo prints or negatives. The target is to digitize over 5 million archival units within three years. So far, nearly 40 people working in shifts seven days a week (with only nighttime breaks) have digitized over 3.5 million bulletin pages (of which 2.7 million or 75% of the total on paper, and nearly 800,000 or 84% of the total on microfiche), and nearly 400,000 photographs (about 62% of the planned quantity).

The third focus is making the archives accessible. There are two aspects to this : first, physical access to the paper archives for anyone interested. "The agency opened a special reading room called 'BTA Archive Hub', where  journalists, researchers, students and members of the public already work daily," he specified.

The second aspect is access to the digitized content. "We are actively working on this, and this conference will be very useful in that regard. In any case, we must tap the capabilities of AI," he added.

"In this context, let me digress: AI should be used rather than feared. It can indeed pose a serious threat to the news industry because it can potentially generate fake news factories, trolls, new forms of propaganda, disinformation, deepfakes, and manipulated images. But AI also has enormous potential for real news making. News agencies can use it to improve their work, for transcription, subtitling, translation, and building databases. The future of news agencies lies in collaboration between journalists' natural intelligence and technology. Through new technologies, we can steer people through the ocean of news, including historical news, so they don’t 'drown' in it. The best way to do this is to publish more news about science," Valchev emphasized.

He added that news, including archived news, should be accessible through all communication channels, including social media. News agencies should better utilize social and video platforms instead of competing with them for funding.

Valchev stressed that agencies must maintain a presence everywhere online and in all formats: news briefs, pictures, video, audio, infographics. "We should highlight the need to deliver real news to young people via novel formats and technologies. BTA is a good example in this respect, being present not only on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube, but also on platforms popular with young users: Instagram, TikTok, and Threads. We are also preparing to launch on Snapchat, which is favoured by the youngest audience," he announced.

The fourth focus is copyright protection. "As a copyright lawyer myself, I won't go into detail, but I must say it’s a serious issue. It is precisely protecting copyright that poses a challenge to digitizing BTA's subject archive because it contains newspaper clippings," he pointed out.

The fifth focus is promoting BTA's archives. Valchev said this is done in three ways: "Every day, we publish on social media at least one story on that date in history, along with file photos. We've revived LIK, the magazine for culture, art, and literature, which reproduces BTA archive materials on particular topics. Since January 2024, the all issues of the magazine since its relaunch in 2022 have been available free of charge in pdf format on the BTA website. Additionally, BTA distributes over 300 print copies of LIK at no charge to libraries, cultural institutions, and universities. The magazine supports digital literacy among the elderly and introduces young people to the cultural heritage of Bulgaria and the world. BTA has also published a book collecting archive news, with one domestic and one international news item for each year since the agency's inception in 1898 until 2023," he added.

The sixth focus is cooperation with other news agencies, which has yet to expand. BTA has a strong groundwork in this regard, Valchev said, noting that it has concluded partnership agreements with 50 national agencies.

Currently, BTA chairs the News Agencies World Congress of News Agencies, after hosting its 2019 edition in Sofia, which was mottoed "The Future of News".  The Association of the Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE) established its headquarters in Bulgaria, with BTA serving as its seat and secretary general. The Bulgarian News Agency is also a member of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) and part of MINDS International (a global organization of 25 leading news agencies for collaboration in information services). "This organization is comparable to the 'G-20 of news' and affiliates agencies from the US, Canada, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, India, Japan, and Australia," he explained.

"And one last thing: forums like this are extremely valuable because the very fact that we are having this discussion implies that nothing in the world, not even artificial intelligence, can supplant natural human communication," Valchev concluded.

Wednesday's conference is dedicated to cultural heritage as an online resource and to the past, present and future of encyclopaedias. Participants in the discussions include Europeana Foundation General Director Harry Verwayen, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev, scientists of three institutes of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: IB&CTh, the Institute of Physical Chemistry (IPC), and the National Archaeological Institute with Museum, as well as of the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. The discussions are moderated by the IB&CTh Director Prof. Roumiana Preshlenova, and by Vesela Tsakova of the IPC. The conference is held as part of the National Roadmap for Research Infrastructure (INFRA-MAT), with financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science.