Founders of the NALIS Foundation

Central Library of Bulgarian Academy of Science - TO THE DIGITAL COLLECTION

Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridski” - TO THE DIGITAL COLLECTION

American University in Bulgaria - TO THE DIGITAL COLLECTION

The initiator of the project of a National Academic Library and Information System was Assoc. Prof. Dincho Krastev (1947-2015). His visionary idea was implemented in cooperation with and the support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation. He was the head of the NALIS Foundation from its establishment in 2009 until the end of his life.

Assoc. Prof. Krastev was a mathematician who graduated and defended his doctoral dissertation at the Mechanical and Mathematical Faculty of the Moscow State University. He worked at the Mathematical Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and taught at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski " between 1977-1986.

Prof. Krastev joined the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BC-BAS) in 1987 and was its director for 21 years (1992-2013). A person of high professionalism and wide culture, a bibliophile and erudite, he has considerable merits for the modernization of the Bulgarian librarianship. As a result of his efforts as the head of the Academic Library, a local computer network was established (1995), the first Bulgarian web site was launched (1997), the most modern automated library system was introduced and an electronic catalog created (2003) and the first Cyrillic entries into the WorldCat submitted.