The Library of Congress holds over 1900 journal titles from and about Serbia. Formats include printed volumes, microfilm reels, and full-text digital titles available via subscription databases. Of the 1900 titles, approximately 175 have current subscriptions such as NIN [Weekly Information Newspaper] and Vreme [Time], the political weekly magazines with the highest circulation; scientific journals such as Matematički vesnik [Mathematical herald] and Archives of Biological Sciences; special industry and engineering titles such as International journal for traffic and transport engineering and Tekstilna industrija [Textile industry]; literary and language journals such as Jezik danas [Language today] from Matica srpska and Književnost i jezik [Literature and language]; titles on history and cultural heritage such as Glasnik Etnografskog muzeja u Beogradu [Herald of the ethnographic museum in Beograd] and Peščanik [Sandglass], from the historical archive in Niš.
The historical journal holdings include some remarkable titles such as complete or near complete runs of the parliamentary proceedings and protocols for the Kingdom of Serbia from 1870-1918, including those of the exile government in Corfu, the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1918-1941, and for communist Yugoslavia as a nation from the 1940s-1980s. From the communist and post-communist era, The Library of Congress has most issues of Politikin zabavnik [Political illustrated magazine], Ilustrovana politika [Illustrated politics], NIN, the popular news magazine, and Duga [Rainbow], an illustrated biweekly, later weekly magazine. Collection strengths include history, literature, political and cultural life of Serbia, economics, and law. The majority of the titles are in Serbian, both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, but some are in English, French or Russian.
For the most current information about our journal holdings, it is best to consult the Library of Congress online catalog. Databases containing over 120 full-text journals and newspapers from Serbia are described in the section of this guide devoted to Onsite Only Electronic Resources.
Unbound issues of currently received journal titles are available in the European Reading Room, but most of the Serbian journal collection are bound volumes held in the general collections and may be requested in any general reading room.
The Serbian newspaper collection consists of almost 200 titles on microfilm, in print or online. The earliest title in the collection is a reprint of first Serbian newspaper, Serbskiia povsednevniia noviny, also called Serbskiia noviny [Serbian daily newspaper], published from 1791-1792, in Vienna. The oldest Serbian newspaper held in original format by the Library of Congress is Serbskii narodnyi list [Serbian national newspaper] from 1835, issued in Hungary. The majority of the Serbian newspaper titles in the collection are from the 20th and 21st centuries, with only a handful from earlier centuries. Holdings from the communist and post-communist eras are particularly strong, with many central Yugoslav titles, including long runs of several important dailies, such as Borba [Fight], Privredni pregled [Business review] and Politika [Politics]. Also of interest is an historical collection on microfilm of rare German-language newspapers from Vojvodina in the interwar period.
Today the Library maintains subscriptions to 15 current newspapers from Serbia and its North American diasporas, including as well specialty subject papers such as those for literature and religion. Examples of current subscriptions include Politika [Politics], Danas [Today], Dnevnik [Daily] from Novi Sad, Magyar szó [Hungarian word] in Hungarian, and Književne novine [Literary newspaper]. There are also diaspora titles from the United States and Canada such as Amerikanski srbobran [American srbobran] from Pittsburgh, Ogledalo [Mirror] from Chicago, and Kanadski srbobran [Canadian srbobran] from Ontario. A complete listing of the Library of Congress holdings entitled Serbian Newspapers at the Library of Congress shows titles, holdings, format and location of the materials. Library of Congress sources for digital newspapers are described in the newspaper guide and in the section of this guide devoted to Onsite Only Electronic Resources.
Preservation of newspapers and serials published on newsprint remains a top priority for the Library of Congress. For Serbian newspapers we no longer microfilm our holdings, rather we digitize them as the main method of preservation. Digitized titles are available onsite only via Stacks, the primary access system for rights-restricted digital content in the Library’s permanent collection. See immediately below for more information about Stacks.
Stacks is the primary access system for rights-restricted digital content in the Library’s permanent collection. In contrast, (a) content that is broadly available is generally on the Library’s public website; and (b) content for which the Library has licensed onsite access is primarily available in the Electronic Resources Catalog (EROC). The Library of Congress is no longer microfilming newspapers or serials on newsprint and instead is digitizing such materials and placing them into Stacks. Serbian content of interest in Stacks is mainly these digitized newspapers and periodicals, plus a handful of e-books.
