Abstract:

The need for proper, systematic and accessible information on archival and documentary heritage to meet the growing scientific and public interest in different historical periods is a problem facing everyone – researchers, teachers, students and citizens. This is fully valid even during the “information” boom that each of us is experiencing. It is clear that we face a number of information limitations: lack and/or ignorance of the availability of reliable documentary sources; scattered (in the sense of institutionally and geographically remote) documents; limited scope and fragmentation of sources; difficulties in finding documents and information even in the relatively orderly systems of archives, museums and libraries; a lack of systematic opportunities in time and space for informing about the availability of documentary funds and arrays; speculative and incorrect citation of claim data in research, in the press, in the global network, etc.; ignorance of the existence of methodology and good archival practices in working with documents, their description, promotion and digitization, etc.

The search for solutions to the above problems is the focus of the project entitled “Information Portal for Archival and Documentary Heritage of the Bulgarian Revival”, which offers interdisciplinary fundamental research, and which aims to create a portal that collects, structures and systematizes our familiar knowledge of archival materials from the period of the Bulgarian Revival – the most famous and researched period in the Bulgarian national history.

The purpose of this report is to provide summarized and analytically presented information about the results achieved by the team of researchers in the implementation of the first stage of the Project; to acquaint the international scientific community with the completed tasks and implemented project solutions, as well as to present the forthcoming activities under the Project. The changes in the work program and methodology related to the construction of the Information Portal that occurred after the Covid 19 pandemic will also be highlighted.

Acknowledgement:
This paper is one of the outcomes of the scholarly project, titled “Information Portal for Archival-Documentary Heritage of the Bulgarian Revival” Contract № KP-06-N 25/2, 13.12.2018 with Annex FNI-2912, 17.12.2020, National Science Fund of Ministry of Education and Science.

Keywords:

Access to archival information, ICT, digitalization, Bulgarian history.