The specialized scientific library at the Bulgarian History Museum was established at the same time as the museum itself — on May 5, 1973. However, work on acquiring the book collection and organizing the book lending process, as well as the organizational activities related to the actual creation of the museum, began a year later.
The vast majority of the library’s collection today consists of books that are typical for a museum library. At the same time, over the last half-century, a significant number of valuable and rare editions have been accumulated, obtained as donations and deliberately purchased for use by museum specialists. It is precisely these valuable and rare editions that we will begin to present in this section of our Digital Library rubric every Friday.
Why on Friday? Because of the symbolic significance of this day for the Bulgarian History Museum – the Order of the Council of Ministers for the establishment of the Bulgarian History Museum was published in the State Gazette, i.e. it came into force, in its issue No. 90 of May 25, which in 1973 fell on a Friday.
First, a clarification is required. The valuable and rare editions that we will present in this section are, according to our current plan, solely from the library collection of the Bulgarian History Museum, and not from the museum’s collections – even though the latter contain a much larger number of manuscripts, old printed books, and rare editions, some of which are of global significance — the Ohrid transcript of “History” by the kouropalates John Skylitzes from the 13th century (the only major medieval chronicle preserved in Bulgaria), the Boyana Psalter, also from the 13th century, along many others.