Local History Resources at the “Parteniy Pavlovich” Regional Library in Silistra

The collection includes digitised copies of valuable newspapers and magazines held in the collection of the ‘Parteniy Pavlovich’ Regional Library in Silistra. It covers a broad chronological range – from rare post-liberation titles such as the literary magazine *Misul* (1886) and iconic local newspapers (*Probuda*, *Svobodna Dobrudzha*), to later regional official publications.

A key focus of the collection is the newspaper ‘Silistrenska Tribuna’, which constitutes the largest part of the collection, with digitised issues covering the period from 1956 to 1972. The newspaper was the official regional daily for the town of Silistra during the socialist era, published as a joint organ of the District Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP), the District People’s Council and the District Committee of the Fatherland Front (OF).

Over the years, its publication frequency underwent significant changes: it began as a weekly (1956), became a fortnightly (from April 1959), and from August 1963 began to be published three times a week. An interesting bibliographical feature of the publication was the inclusion of a specialised foreign-language page in Turkish (‘Ziya’) in 1965. 

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This digitised collection on the ‘Nasledstvo BG’ portal is a rich source of material and a valuable resource for local history research, preserving detailed accounts of the economic, socio-political, cultural and sporting life in Silistra and Southern Dobruja from the late 19th century to the 1970s. The collection is available in digital format to both the academic community and the general public. All documents within it are integrated with optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which transforms the collection into a practical and user-friendly digital archive, enabling the immediate retrieval of specific facts, names and events.