"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, 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."

The International Bibliography of Periodical Literature (IBZ) indexes periodical literature from all disciplines with particular strength in the social sciences and the humanities. It is a multilingual database with academic periodicals from more than 40 countries in over 40 languages.  It indexes over 11,5000 journals and contains over 3.2 million articles.  

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. 

IBZ is not a full text database. 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.