The updated digital library of the National Statistical Institute is now available to its readers worldwide. Users now have online access to over 1,200,000 digital pages from NSI’s book collection and can consult over 14, 000 bibliographic descriptions. Last year alone, more than 24,500 online readers were registered, who read more than 625,000 pages.
The new digital library provides enhanced search features for present and archived statistical information in both Bulgarian and English. The modernisation of the library started in early 2024 with the digitisation of the first edition of the “Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Bulgaria” from 1909. Today, the complete collection of yearbooks is available to anyone interested in the development of the country from the turn of the century to the present day. The editions of the Statistical Yearbooks are bilingual – until 1944 they were in Bulgarian and French, and since 1992 – in Bulgarian and English. The digitisation of the censuses from the beginning of the Third Bulgarian State at the end of the 19th century is forthcoming.
The NSI digital library is one of the first and most content-rich online digital statistical libraries in Europe. It includes the complete collections of the “Statistical Yearbook”, “Foreign Trade”, “Population and Demographic Processes”, “Statistics” Journal, “Household Budgets in the Republic of Bulgaria”, “Education in the Republic of Bulgaria” and others.
All this was made possible after the purchase and installation of two new modern scanners, which have been in operation since the beginning of the year, and with the support of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. “For us, preserving and displaying statistical heritage is an extremely important part of our work, because only those who keep their history as a real treasure are well prepared for the future. The preservation of NSI’s literary wealth by transferring it into an electronic format is our priority and our efforts in this direction will continue”, is the position of the President of NSI, Assoc. Prof. Atanas Atanasov.
