"IBZ" stands for "Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur aus allen Gebieten des Wissens," i.e. "International bibliography of periodical literature covering all fields of knowledge."  IBZ is also known as "The Dietrich."

For languages written in the Cyrillic script, IBZ uses the German DIN system (which appears in a table here), but without any diacritical marks.  For example, "ц" and "ч" are both rendered as "c", and "з" and "ж" both become "z".  "Х" is transliterated as "ch."

Although IBZ's name suggests that all academic fields are covered, in practice this database functions as "an international and interdisciplinary bibliography of academic periodical literature mainly from the Humanities, Social sciences, and Arts." IBZ arguably offers the broadest subject coverage of any database, including academic periodicals from more than 40 countries in over 40 languages.  

As of February, 2015, "The database IBZ contains more than 3.7 million journal articles from 11,500 journals," which can be browsed here. " Every year some 120,000 entries from 5,500 journals evaluated currently are added. The database is updated weekly." IBZ now includes abstracts--as of January 2014, the number of article abstracts available was 60,000. Journal issues from past years are also considered."

For materials indexed by IBZ and its predecessors prior to 1983, researchers should consult the University of Illinois' print copy,  under the call numbers 053 BD, 053 BD sup., 053 BDB, and 050 In8. These hundreds of volumes cover the years between 1896 and 1982.

Most articles are assigned broad German subject headings, which are also translated into English. This can make it difficult to predict which spelling/transliteration of a search term will be most effective. For example, a search for "moldova" as subject, author, or title word yields 274 results; for "moldau," 199 results; for "moldawien," 229; for "moldavia," 81. On the other hand, a search for "kazakhstan" as a subject, author or title word yields 430 results; for "kasachstan," 406; but the same search for "kazachstan" yields only 8 results. These, however, illustrate nicely the kind of coverage of continental European publications that IBZ provides.