Of BTA Archives Presented at 40th MINDS Conference

A presentation detailing the digitization of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency’s (BTA) extensive historical archives was given at the 40th Media Innovation Network (MINDS) conference in Vienna on Thursday. The BTA’s collection encompasses over 125 years of records, including millions of news bulletins and hundreds of thousands of photographs detailing significant events both within Bulgaria and internationally. The 40th MINDS conference, held from April 22 to 24, focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and other methodologies to maintain an accurate, reliable, sustainable, and accessible information base.

Attendees included top news agency representatives, such as BTA Director General Kiril Valchev and Secretary General Julia Sokolova. At the forum, specialists presented the project underway to digitize the BTA’s 125-year history. This initiative is part of a Ministry of Culture project supporting the digitization of national cultural assets, which BTA joined in 2021.

The project, budgeted at BGN 4 million, commenced in July 2023 and is scheduled to continue until June 2026. BTA aims to preserve and digitize one of Bulgaria’s most comprehensive historical records. Participants were briefed on challenges encountered, such as digitizing content using old Bulgarian orthography, handling damaged pages, and improving metadata for photographs.

The presentation showcased the digitization of BTA’s first news bulletin from 1898, which covered topics ranging from royal health updates to Balkan stock markets. To date, the team has digitized 4.4 million pages out of 5.3 million and 644,000 images out of 1.8 million from the 1898-2012 period. Beyond digitization, the Bulgarian News Agency proposed establishing a BTA Institute at the conference.

This institute would invite 15 Bulgarian AI organizations to develop freely accessible products, initially implemented at BTA before expanding to other media outlets.

Topics: #archives #minds #conference