GLAM/Newsletter/October 2016/Contents/Bulgaria report

This Month in GLAM – Volume VI, Issue X, October 2016

Normal version • Single page version

Bulgaria report

Bulgarian Archives State Agency; Archives Challenge

By Spasimir Pilev & Delyan Drumev

Valuable photos of factories in Bulgaria dating back to 1912

Logo of Bulgarian Archives State Agency

In October 2016 thanks to our collaboration with Bulgarian Archives State Agency we added 162 valuable photos of factories in Bulgaria dating back to 1912 from photo album presented to Ferdinand I of Bulgaria.

The photographs are valuable as they are depicting the Bulgarian economy at the beginning of the 20th century, just before the breakout of the First and Second Balkan Wars and World War I. Most of them contain additional valuable information such as the date of foundation of the factory, initial funding, number of employees as well as related data for 1912. Information about the Bulgarian economy from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century is very scarce and most of these factories remain unknown especially after the end of World War II when a totalitarian communist government was established in Bulgaria. A lot of these factories were nationalized after 1946. The images would be a good reason to seek out new information and to write new articles. Related articles that have already been created were illustrated by some of these photos.

We expect that these images as well as 6400 more will be described thoroughly in other languages, coordinates will be added if possible and that they will be a good occasion for new article creations during the second edition of the Archives Challenge. The challenge starts on November 15th 2016 and ends on December 15th 2016. The latter is available for everyone to join.