A Comparison of the Iter Bibliography and the International Medieval Bibliography

Abstract

Librarians and researchers studying me-dieval history need a sophisticated under-standing of the contents of relevant data-bases, including the Iter Bibliography and the International Medieval Bibliography, to develop effective research strategies. Such an understanding includes the strengths and usefulness of the individual databases and an appreciation of what materials are unique to each of the databases. A com-parison of journal titles indexed by each of these databases does not provide ad-equate evidence of the databases' coverage, strengths, and weaknesses. We undertook this study to gain an understanding of what a researcher using these resources could expect to retrieve from each database. T he Iter Bibliography and the International Medieval Bib-liography (IMB) are indexes for materials on the European Middle Ages. Librarians and research-ers studying medieval history need a sophisticated understanding of the con-tents of these databases to develop ef-fective research strategies. Such an un-derstanding includes the strengths and usefulness of the individual databases and an appreciation of what materials are unique to each of the databases. A comparison of journal titles indexed by Iter and the IMB does not provide adequate evidence of the databases' coverage, strengths, and weaknesses. We undertook this study to gain an understanding of what a researcher us-ing Iter and the IMB could expect to retrieve from each.