The Cuneiform Bibliography (KeiBi) appears annually in print in the journal Orientalia by the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. Since its first issue penned by Prof. Dr. Alfred Pohl S. J. in 1940 (Orientalia N.S. Bd. 9) it is an indispensable aid for research, teaching, and study of ancient Near Eastern studies and related disciplines. In order to enable digital queries within the entire KeiBi data set, Dr. des. Georg Neumann and Prof. Dr. Konrad Volk had the printed bibliographic data transferred to a digital database.
In cooperation with the Institute of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Münster, the KeiBi data are made available anually for online use by the Bibliography's current author Prof. Dr. Hans Neumann. This arrangement has been in place since issue 57 (Orientalia N.S. 68, 1999), the older volumes have been digitized and bibliographically indexed. For copyright reasons, the two most recent issues are not included in the online database.
The database, which went online in 2012, now includes almost 90,000 entries (as of 2021) and comprises monographs, anthologies, and articles as well as obituaries and reviews. This makes it the world's most extensive collection of bibliographical references in the field of ancient Near Eastern studies / Assyriology. Its link on the central platform of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) makes it widely visible, and over 300,000 views in recent years (as of 2021) underline its importance for research and teaching. All entries are indexed according to library standards so that filtered search queries are possible. The search results can be exported both as BibTeX and as a PDF.
The development of KeiBi-Online was made possible by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the "Propylaeum - Specialized Information Service Classics" project. The KeiBi database was developed as part of the Propylaeum module Ancient Near East at the University Library of Tübingen with the support of the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) also at the University of Tübingen.
In 2020 Prof. Dr. Konrad Volk handed over operational leadership of KeiBi online to Prof. Dr. Wiebke Meinhold. Supported by long-time employee Dr. des. Georg Neumann, she is planning a comprehensive literature database for ancient Near Eastern studies in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Michael Jursa and Dr. Michaela Weszeli from the Institute for Oriental Studies at the University of Vienna. This database will make both the data of KeiBi online and those of the registers in the journal Archiv für Orientforschung accessible to all researchers, students, and interested parties worldwide in digital open access.
