Matica srpska
The Matica srpska (Serbian Cyrillic: Матица српска) is the oldest cultural-scientific institution of Serbia. Matica srpska was founded in 1826 in Budapest and moved to Novi Sad in 1864.
Of all the Slavic maticas, Matica srpska was the first to be established in the Habsburg Empire on the ancestral territory of the Raci (better known as Rascia) at the time of Serbian national and cultural awakening while under Austro-Hungarian and Turkish thralldom. The word matica in Serbian, in this case, means "gueen bee," therefore, implying that this organization would act like a queen bee and breed more workers for the Serbian cultural hive, no different than the meaning of today's matrix. In the national awakening the Serbs of the Serbian Vojvodina played an instrumental role as, by force of historical circumstance, they formed at this period the core of Serbian intellectual life. One of the most important tasks facing the Serbs in advancing cultural-national rebirth was the solution of the literary language problem, and, as a result of the first fifty years of the 19th century saw the Vojvodina Serbs engaged in a intense debate about the kind of literary language that their newly-revitalized, emerging nation should adopt.
The story of the Matica srpska begins in 1824 when the Austro-Hungarian authorities permitted writer Djordje Magarašević, a professor at a gymnasium in the provincial town of Novi Sad, to publish a literary and scholarly journal entiled Serbske letopisi (Serbian Annals). Magarašević had little financial backing but soon found benefactors who supported his efforts, and in time somehow the writers and editors of the publication developed into a learned society. It has also been the most lasting, for the society successfully overcame the pressures applied by mistrustful Austro-Hungarian officials as well as later financial difficulties. With varying degrees of success but with great perseverance, it has continued to support and guide Serbian intellectual endeavor, first as a part of the Habsburg Empire and much later in Serbia.
The Matica Srpska Society was one of the initiators of the Novi Sad agreement on the Serbo-Croatian language (1954), and it led the action for making the unique orthography of the language (1960). They compiled The Vocabulary of Serbian Standard Literary Language in six volumes (1967-1976).
In Yugoslavia, Matica srpska was one half of a joint project (with Matica hrvatska) to develop a common Serbo-Croatian dictionary. Mid-way through the project (1967), Matica hrvatska, in accordance with the declaration of principles about the Croatian language, withdrew, and Matica srpska was to finish the dictionary on her own.
Matica srpska publishes the Letopis Matice srpske magazine, which is one of the oldest in the world[according to whom?][verification needed], being continuously published since 1826.
The Law of the Matica Srpska Society (1986) regulates matters of endowment and legacy, given by the national benefactors, and how money is spent for various cultural and educational purposes.
The Matica srpska has a library with about 800,000 books.
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