About the Bibliography
The Montessori Bibliography Online (MBO) is a database of bibliographic entries (i.e., references, citations). The Bibliography is international in scope, comprising sources in many different languages. It makes information about Montessori education and the Montessori movement more accessible through an online interface which includes links to digitized source materials (when available).
Historically, bibliographies and indexes concerning Montessori education were published as print documents which referenced other print sources. By embracing digital technology, the Montessori Bibliography Online connects the citations directly to the referenced, digitized, source material. This database, conceived and compiled by Joel Parham, and hosted by the Center for Learner Agency Research and Action (CLARA) at the University of Kansas, builds on previously compiled indexes to consolidate references into a comprehensive repository with a robust search capability.
Additional details regarding the Bibliography are outlined in this article: The Montessori Bibliography Online: A resource for the global Montessori community (Journal of Montessori Research, 2022).
New entries are regularly added to the Bibliography and up-to-date statistics regarding the entries are outlined in this news post.
If you are interested in collaborating on the cataloging of entries in the Bibliography, please contact me via email. Please include a brief introduction of yourself and your experience with cataloging bibliographic content or metadata management.
Resources and Source Material
The core of this database is built on the Montessori: Bibliografia Internazionale / International Bibliography, 1896-2000 (edited by Clara Tornar, 2001). This data is supplemented with citations from the North American Montessori Teachers Association (NAMTA) Montessori Bibliography (published in 3 separate editions; compiled through the years by various individuals, including Mary Maher Boehnlein, David Kahn, and Renee Pembleton), and Maria-Montessori-Bibliographie 1896-1996: Internationale Bibliographie der Schriften und Forschungsliteratur (edited by Winfried Böhm, 1999).
Data from these sources were cross-referenced to remove duplicates and then incorporated into the Bibliography. Once selected, entries were catalogued to include additional descriptive information along with links to digitized source material when available.
A variety of databases and resources have been and continue to be consulted to update and add additional sources, including, but not limited to, the following:
- Academic publishers (SpringerNature, Taylor & Francis, ScienceDirect, SAGE, Wiley)
- Archival collections
- Digital libraries
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- EBSCO databases
- Education Resources Information Center (ERIC)
- Google Books
- Google Scholar
- HathiTrust Digital Library
- Historical newspaper collections
- Institutional repositories
- Internet Archive
- JSTOR
- National Libraries and Archives
- OCLC WorldCat
- ProjectMUSE
- ProQuest databases