The Zeitschriftendatenbank or ZDB (translated as: German Union Catalogue of Serials) is the central bibliographical database for title and ownership records of ongoing collections in Germany and Austria, for example from trade journals, magazines and newspapers.
[1] The journal database is managed by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (SBB) in cooperation with the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), the German National Library, which is responsible for the technical system support and further development.
The basic requirement for the inclusion of a title in the journal database is that it belongs to the genre of the continuous collective works like periodicals, serials or series issued in several parts (booklets, volumes) and which are not limited in the duration of publication (such as lexica).
[nb 1] Due to its range of title and inventory records, the ZDB is the backbone of interlibrary loan system in Germany for the aforementioned types of literature.
In addition to the holdings of German libraries, it also lists those from Austria and (to a limited extent) other European countries.