Particularly in the humanities and social sciences, festschrifts are a popular forum for discussion. The IJBF provides quick and easy general access to these important resources for scholars and students. The festschrifts are located in state and regional libraries and their bibliographic details are recorded.

Since 1983, more than 659,000 articles from more than 30,500 festschrifts, published between 1977 and 2011, have been catalogued.