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  2. Institute for Medieval Studies
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  4. International Medieval Bibliography

International Medieval Bibliography

International Medieval Bibliography

The University of Leeds is home to the International Medieval Bibliography (IMB), the world-leading bibliography of interdisciplinary texts relating to the medieval period.

The IMB is a multidisciplinary bibliographic database covering Europe, North Africa and the Middle East for the entire period from 300 to 1500 CE. It aims to provide a comprehensive, current bibliography of articles in journals and miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften) published worldwide in over 40 different languages. The disciplines covered include (but are not limited to) Archaeology, Art History, Languages and Literatures, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Gender Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Manuscript Studies, Medicine and Health, Theology and Philosophy, Social History, Economics and Music.

The IMB was founded in 1967 at the University of Leeds by Peter H. Sawyer and is now subscribed to by university libraries and individual scholars throughout Europe, North America and Australasia. The organisation and publication of the IMB is a collaboration between the University of Leeds and the Belgian publisher Brepols.The IMB shares an interface and a harmonised index with the Bibliographie de civilisation médiévale (Poitiers, France) and the International Bibliography of Humanism and the Renaissance (Thessaloniki, Greece).

Key features

  • Over 580,000 article records
  • Quarterly updates
  • Printed update published annually
  • Comprehensive, multilingual cataloguing and indexing system designed by medievalists for medievalists
  • More than 120,000 index terms
  • Worldwide network of academic contributors ensuring regular coverage of 4,500 periodicals and a total of over 5,000 miscellany volumes

Testimonials

“The IMB was one of the first bibliographical research tools I used as a graduate student at the University of Toronto in the 1980s. Then in book form, it instantly became an indispensable tool for all my graduate research. With its digitisation in the 1990s, the IMB turned into an even more valuable resource with its extensive and comprehensive searches. Indeed, whenever I begin a new project, I begin it with an IMB search. As a graduate supervisor for more than 30 years at the University of Bristol and now at the University of Calgary, I have recommended the same approach to dozens of PhD and MA students. May the IMB long continue to support emerging and established scholars on their journey to (re)discover the past.”

Carolyn Muessig, Chair of Christian Thought (University of Calgary)

The IMB has been a fixture in the lives of many medievalists since the days when it was a printed book. Now, on the internet, it is an even more useful and easy-to-use resource. The study of the Middle Ages covers a wide chronology and geography, and is inherently interdisciplinary, with most scholars needing to keep up with developments in several adjacent disciplines. The IMB is the only bibliographical resource that meets this need, enabling all medievalists to track down the research most relevant to their work from across a wide range of publications.

Professor Judith Jesch (University of Nottingham)

“Whenever one contemplates starting some scholarly work on a medieval topic, it is sensible to find out what has already been written about that topic over the last decades. I always start by searching the International Medieval Bibliography. It is simply the best international bibliography on the Middle Ages, and, irrespective of discipline, topic, area, or era, it never fails to come up with helpful references to literature. Of course, you never find all the references you need in the IMB – but then, you would not find all of them in other bibliographies either. And there is more: the references you do find in the IMB may help you set up lines of enquiry you had not thought of before. The time spent consulting this online bibliography is time well spent, as the IMB really can help your research along.”

Professor Marco Mostert (Utrecht University)

Where the first annual volumes contained some three thousand records each, the latest printed volumes and the online updates contain over 16,000 records every year. And a couple of years ago the total number of records in IMB-Online passed the half million mark. So I think that over 500,000 records, fully indexed with a wide range of search functions, is a fine achievement for 50 years’ work, and I hope, a good basis for the future of Medieval Studies in Leeds and the wider world.

Professor Alan V. Murray, former Editorial Director of the IMB

Call for contributors

The IMB’s editorial staff are based at the Institute for Medieval Studies and supported by a worldwide network of contributors, recruited from academics, librarians, and archivists. Contributors are always sought for particular geographical or subject areas. If you are interested in becoming a contributor, please contact the editor.

The IMB is looking for individuals or organisations interested in joining its existing range of partners throughout the world. Contributors are sought for national, regional, and local history in Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Ukraine, and the Middle East / North Africa. Thematic contributors (who may be based anywhere) are particularly sought for art history, humanism, Italian literature, French literature, German literature, Islamic studies, Jewish studies, linguistics, numismatics, and music. If you are interested in finding out more about becoming a contributor to the IMB, please contact the editor.

Staff

Editorial team 

Editorial Board