If you are a researcher, a curious tourist coming to Baia Mare, or simply interested in the (approximative) 700-year history of the city by the Sasar river, this summary is for you. The archives listed here are in Romanian and Hungarian languages.
Although the interest for digitization of the local authorities is a shameful little-to-none, a small number of documents – mostly scholarly publications – were saved in pdf and made available on the web. Here they are, listed by their language.
Romanian language
Biblioteca-digitala.ro
A national digitization platform, this site is slow and sometimes offline without notice, but its collection is evolving, with documents being added every month. Documents can be downloaded for free. Recommended searches: “Baia Mare”; “Maramures”; “Marmatia”.
The beauty of this platform being a national one is you can find ‘Baia Mare’ references in publications form other parts of the country.
Romanian National Archives – local branch
Another neglected site with 1990’s look and feel and very few updates, it features links to a handful of fonds and collections that were digitized circa 2014. You can browse the pictures, but sorry, no downloads.
Their yearly magazine features top notch storytelling and is brimful with interesting articles. The issues can be downloaded for free. Unfortunately not all the editions were digitized and the collection was not updated with the latest release (2020).
Maramures Museum of History and Archeology
The county museum has its residence in Baia Mare. Most of their “Publications” menu on the website is digitized and can be downloaded for free.
The yearly magazine is a captivating read. Branded “Marmatia”, it is missing issues #1 to #6 on the website – those can be found on the biblioteca-digitala archive, mentioned in the first paragraph in this blog.
The Maramures County Library
You can download for free in pdf format resources such as the library’s own magazine (going back to 2004), a catalogue featuring 100 personalities from Maramures (released 2018) and a number of biographies of local personalities.
If you pay them a visit in person, you can flip through the pages of newspaper magazines going back before World Word II, but sorry – no digital versions of those.
Hungarian language
The Hungaricana project includes a wealth of resources about Baia Mare (Nagybanya in Hungarian): 400+ historical images and postcards (copyright enforced, no download), the local newspaper going back to 1899 (free download), maps etc. Find those links in a separate blog on my website, located here.
georgemotoc.com 