Online catalogs and print indexes are excellent resources for locating information about periodicals. The online catalogs of the national libraries of each country are discussed in detail on the pages for national bibliography for each country. They also are grouped together for convenience on one page about Library Catalogs. Please remember that sources pertaining to Yugoslavia are relevant for Montenegrin periodicals. Below are descriptions of electronic resources, as well as print periodical bibliographies.
Electronic Periodical Resources
COBISS Montenegro
The Montenegrin integrated Cobiss search interface is designed, like those of the other former Yugoslav republics and Bulgaria, to search the digitized records of all the national catalogs via a general search. This does not mean that the search covers everything in the libraries since not all records have been digitized, but efforts are being made to make these search engines as thorough as possible. Given that the small size of the individual Balkan states, a significant part of the searching community is always international, which necessitates user friendliness for foreigners who may or may not be familiar with local languages and/or collections. Cobiss can be directed to search in particular libraries as well; in the Montenegrin case, this includes the National Library, the university and academic libraries, the special libraries, public and school libraries. The search language can be set to English (generally poor results, although some hit will be made), Serbian in the Latin script (useful for Yugoslav era materials) or Serbian in the Cyrillic script (most useful, especially for pre-1945 materials).
The COBISS interface was updated around 2019 for easier integrated searching. As of 2020 the website offered integrated searching of over 45 Montenegrin libraries. Upon entrance to the site, choose the database where you wish the search to be made: either in the general catalog or in one of the specialized library collections in the right window. Note that if a choice of a particular database is no made (if, for example, my library or search is chosen from the top page) then Cobiss will always search the general, shared catalog. in the top row of tabs next to search is the “My Library” tab, which allows patrons to choose a specific library and enter their membership information to access their library accounts.
Once inside the search tab, there will be three possible directives. In a basic search, you indicate that you wish to search by entering a single term, which can be narrowed to anything on the drop down menu, including: all materials (incl. e resources), books, serials, articles and other component parts, sound recordings, video recordings and motion pictures, CD/DVD-ROMs, cartographic materials, printed and manuscript music, graphics, toys-objects, performed works and/or events, or all materials and performed works. This choice can be narrowed to particular languages, chosen from another drop down menu of about two dozen languages, many of them Balkan tongues.
The Advanced search choice permits a cross-referenced search of up to eight terms. A series of four main windows each invite a pull-down menu built around the four categories of author, title, year of publication, and keywords. Each search box has a selection of items of between 15 and 20 specific terms; some of them overlap but many do not. An additional column to the right permits four more terms of the researcher’s choosing. Below these main windows, additional settings permit the language choice, specification for the type of material the item is and the script of the language (choices include Cyrillic, Latin or both). Finally, patrons can indicate if the search is to be directed at e-resources alone. Altogether, the advanced search option permits a highly refined, narrow search. If the item exists in the electronic database, the search parameters are sufficient to find it.
The final tab, an the Expert search, is basically a Boolean search with two additional windows below the main box that allow patrons to specify the type of material and script of the item sought.
The National Library of Montenegro links out to COBISS for all of its key catalogs. However, it does offer full text access to digitized editions of limited periodicals and newspapers through its Digital Library. From the periodicals page the available dramatizations are easily browsable.
Print Periodical Bibliographies
Crnogorska bibliografija. 1494-1994.
Cetinje: Centralna Narodna Biblioteka SR Crne Gore, 1985-.
U of I Library Call Number: International & Area Studies Former Yugoslav Reference (Slavic) 016.949745 C869 v.1:1-v.1:10; v.2:1; v.3:1-15; v.4:2, v.4:3, no.1-3, v.4:4-5
This enormous retrospective bibliography, when completed, will cover all of the Montenegrin publishing output from 1494-1994. The first volume of this collection was published in 1985 while the most recent in 2011; the project is continuing. Volume 1 is monographic bibliography, volume 2 is serial (newspapers and journals) bibliography, volume 3 is discussions, articles, and literary works in serial publications, and volume 4 is works about Montenegro in other languages. It is being compiled by scholars at the Ɖurđe Crnojević National Library in Cetinje. Volume 2, part 1, the serials bibliography is arranged into 4 chronological sections: 1835-1918, 1918-1941, 1941-1945, 1945-1984. At some point in the future another part of the serials bibliography will be published to cover the remaining years. Within each of these chronological sections the entries are arranged alphabetically by title. The entries provide full title, dates of publication, publisher, editors, enumeration, frequency, etc. The introduction includes a brief survey of Montenegrin periodical publishing with some statistics. There are indexes for subject, editors, place of publication, and chronology. See the entry on the left for the title Delegatske novine.
Volume 2, the Montenegrin serials bibliography, is, as a single tome, considerably shorter than the other sections of this mammoth, multi-volume collection. It speaks to the relative youth of modern serials publications in Montenegro (dating from the Old-Church Slavonic journal Grlitsa, first published in 1835) as compared to the much older monastic tradition of manuscript publishing. This first serial was largely dedicated to Petar Petrovic-Njegos, the patron saint of Montenegrin national identity who died in 1830, and thus helps situate the relevance of serials publication to the construction of Montenegrin nationalism. A lengthy introduction describes the historical context and development of Montenegrin periodical publishing along the lines of the chronological sections outlined above. It also provides numerical data to the publishing history, which is also useful in understanding the development of Montenegrin serials publishing. The individual periodical descriptions give name changes, publisher and other relevant data, as well as annual breakdowns of numbers and when possible, number of pages. Many entries carry facsimile photos of the publications as well. The collection ends in 1984, following a section in which Montenegro was part of communist Yugoslavia. Generally, publications were listed here if they were printed in Montenegro, since there was not a substantive linguistic demarcation from larger Yugoslav Serbo-Croat culture. There are several indexes in the volume; a subject index, an author/editor index, an index of places of publication, a chronological registry and finally table of contents.
Razvitak stampe i stamparstva u Crnoj Gori 1493-1945.
Martinovic, Niko. S. Beograd: Jugoslovenski institut za novinarstvo, 1965. 262 p.
U of I Library Call Number: Main Stacks 070.9 M36r
Although this item, which discusses Montengrin serials from 1493-1945 in essay form, is more of a monograph about the history of journalism than a bibliography, it does give histories and dates of publication for them. The books is divided into a number of chapters with subsections such as partisan press, Montenegrin publicistika, calendars, yearbooks, almanacs, emigre press, humoristic journals, etc. There are indexes for names, titles, and places of publication. Some illustrations of title pages and covers enhance the text.
Periodical Indexes
Crnogorska bibliografija. 1494-1994.
Cetinje: Centralna Narodna Biblioteka SR Crne Gore, 1985-.
U of I Library Call Number: International & Area Studies Former Yugoslav Reference (Slavic) 016.949745 C869 v. 3, parts 1-15
Part of the massive Montenegrin bibliographic series described in more detail above, volume 3 of Crnogorska bibliografija has been published in 15 parts as of 2011, and is essentially an article index focusing on discussions, articles, and literary works in Montenegrin serials. Breaking down articles by topic (general, philosophy, religion, social sciences, politics, economics, education, ethnology, mathematics, applied sciences, fine arts, linguistics & literary studies, Serbo-Croatian literature, national literature,and geography, biography, & history), it then tracks articles on these particular topics and lists bibliographic entries (article name, author, serial title, publication date and page numbers) for all Montenegrin periodicals (or at least this is the goal). Each issue’s content is followed by several indexes (author, interpreter/translator, subject), a short bibliography and table of contents. Volume 3:1 covers periodical publications from 1835-1885; volume 3:2 covers 1886-1905; vol. 3:3 1906-1918; vol. 3:4 1919-1929; vol. 3:5 1930-1935; vol. 3:6 1936-1944; vol. 3:7 1945-1950; vol. 3:8 1951-1955; vol. 3:9 1956-1960; vol. 3:10 1961-1965; 3:11 1966-1970; vol. 3:12 1971-1975; vol. 3:13 1976-1978; vol. 3:14 1979-1981; vol. 3:15 1982-1985. The series stopped coverage in 1985, the year the first publication of the series, the single-tome vol. 2, was published. There are few national bibliographies that, in part because of the finite size of Montenegrin publishing, have managed an article index for their entire national serial publishing history (prior to 1985). The prospects for scholars working on Montenegro have and will continue to benefit from this thoroughness. The sample entries on the left appear in volume 3:3 under the heading of ethnology and ethnography.
Bibliografija clanaka i priloga u crnogorskim listovima i casopisima 1958. godine.
Jovovic, Vaso. Cetinje: Centralna narodna biblioteka SR Crne Gore, 1964. 255 p.
U of I Library Call Number: Main Stacks Q.059.9182 J82b
Since the retrospective bibliography described above has not yet published a volume covering Montenegrin articles from 1958, this bibliography is still useful. The entries in this periodical index are arranged in a classified subject order which is shown in outline beginning on p. 251. Only a few of the citations have annotations for content and those are usually only a few words in length, but there are indexes for name and subject. One major flaw of this bibliography is that it does not provide a list of the serials that it indexes. See the item below which appears under the section for poetry.
