Since 2014, the Bulgarian Encyclopaedia Scientific Information Centre at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has been included as an educational institution in the “Student Practices – Ministry of Education” project (Project BG05M2OP001-2.013-0001) funded by Operational Programme “Science and Education for Smart Growth 2014-2020”. For the past 9 years our Centre’s mentors have organised internships for over 700 students from 16 higher schools (until the summer of 2023). During their practical training, students acquire new skills working with various databases in their chosen scientific field and combining different types of activities to create quality encyclopedic information resources with modern methodologies. We navigate young people through diverse online information searching for reliable publicly available sources. Students from dozens of university specialties have taken advantage of the internship to build additional skills in the field of academic writing, translation of scientific texts, information processing from first-hand sources, its classification and grading. Within the project, they also had a chance to conduct surveys and field research and to familiarise themselves with the peculiarities of organising encyclopedic data and its graphic layout, interdisciplinary connections, etc. The Bulgarian Encyclopaedia Scientific Information Centre organised 4 scientific and practical seminars with the participation of interns and their academic mentors under the motto ‘Practical application of educational content. Creation of information resources for “Bulgarian Encyclopedia”’. Some of the students’ presentations were included in the “Modern information resources – content and visual layout” exhibition at the central lobby of the BAS. Practical work at Bulgarian Encyclopaedia Scientific Information Centre contributes to building work habits in a real-world interdisciplinary team with mutual benefits to both students and mentors.
