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Anka IGNATOVA: Widening the Public Access to Archival Documents in Bulgaria …
The conformity of the member states of EU with the general access principles, given by
the Recommendation (which was endorsed by the Committee of the Ministers of the
European Union on 12 th of July 2000) 6 , is of basic significance also for the building of a
common European archives space. The cooperation between the state archives of the EU
member states, which started in the beginning of the 90’s of the 20 th century, is entering a
new development stage as a result of the enlargement of EU. According to the
recommendation of the European Council (2005/835/CE) from 14 th of November 2005
for effective actions and a strengthened cooperation in the field of archives in Europe 7 , a
European Archivеs Group (EAG) was created by the European Commission. Its members
are experts, representing the state archives in the member states and the EU institutions.
Among the five basic priority fields of activity of EAG is the creating and maintenance of
an Internet portal that gives access to the documents and archives in Europe
(http://www.apenet.eu). This portal is planned as part of the “library” portal
EUROPEANA (http://www.europeana.eu/portal) and will aid the realization of the
concept of a single starting point of multilingual access to the cultural and scientific
heritage of Europe in electronic format.
The necessity of coordination of our normative acts in the field of archive work with the
European legislation and the above mentioned Recommendation of the European Council
from 14 th of November 2005 is the basic motive for the drawing up of a completely new
archival bill, which was voted into law by the 15 th National Assembly of the Republic of
Bulgaria on 29 th of June 2007. A number of formulations underlie the National Archival
Fund Act 8 , which aim at widening of the access to archival documents.
The new archival act entitles various public institutions (museums, libraries, community
centres, institutes, churches, etc.) to keep historically formed collections of archive
documents. However they are obliged, as the state and official records centres do, to place
them at public disposal according to the regulations of the State Agency “Archives”. The
private archives, which certainly will emerge in the future, are also obliged to place at
public disposal the documents that are assessed as historically valuable. Valuable
documents, received as inheritance, gift, from a will or other sources are to be declared as
well. This requirement, which existed also in the old archive act, is practically unrealized
so far.
The cases of limited access are precisely defined in the act. Permission for access to
archival documents, as well as rejection, is given in written form by the head of the
corresponding archives office, where the rejection is subject to appeal by the applicant
through the legally established rule. The state archives documents that contain citizens’
personal data and were given for consultations before the enforcement of the Personal
Data Preservation Act are still available for access and this is done in the established way.
The rules for use of the documents from the National Archive Fund are given by a
regulation adopted by the Council of Ministers 9 .
The archive offices are obliged to ensure public access of the users to the documents
preserved by them, and for that reason a system of finding aids is created and maintained.
According to the requirements of the new act this system is public and also contains data
on the access limitations. Already in 2006 a number of state archives began to take into
account the removed level of classification for information security in the system of
finding aids and the archive items 10 . To ensure a real access to the documents not only the
availability of the corresponding system of finding aids but also its quality is of great
significance. Therefore their actualization and improvement, also with the view to the
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