On June 25, 2011 Bulgarian statistics celebrates 131 years since its establishment. The beginning of statistics started in 1880 when a statistical department of the Ministry of Finance was established.

In its long history Bulgarian statistics conducted 17 population, housing and farms censuses; monitors the household budgets for more than 85 years and each year conducts approximately 250 different statistical surveys in 35 thematic fields. Thanks to the professionalism, objectivity and high responsibility of Bulgarian statisticians, chapter "Statistics" is the first successfully closed chapter in the process of Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union.

In all these years BNSI works also for data users located out of the country. Even the very first statistical publications were bilingual - they were issued in Bulgarian and French. At present, all BNSI publications are published in Bulgarian and English.

This year BNSI celebrates its anniversary providing new services for facilitating the users. The complete collection of the "Statistics" magazine from its creation in 1929 until 2010 is published on the site of the BNSI’s Digital Library: http://statlib.nsi.bg/en. The users have online access to 250 issues of the magazine, as the collection contains 22,651 digital pages. The magazine is published in Bulgarian language and has summaries of the articles in French, English and Russian.

The BNSI Digital Library was established in 2007. Digital fund is constantly increasing and currently has a data array of over 600 000 digital pages of the Bulgarian statistics from 1881 to the present day.

The publication of the largest series of statistical releases - "Population and Housing Census in Bulgaria" lies ahead.

The digital articles are made and prepared for online access in the Digital Library Center of BNSI. The access to the digitalized publications of Bulgarian statistics from its creation until today in Internet is free of charge.