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.
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, 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.