The British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB) was founded in 1927 by Samuel C. Bradford, Chief Librarian at the Science Museum Library, and A. F. C. Pollard, a professor at Imperial College, London.

Bradford and Pollard were both advocates of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), a system of bibliographic and library classification developed by the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB), later the International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID), based in Brussels. The BSIB was created to serve as a ‘daughter society’ and British committee of the IIB with the aim of ‘promoting the use of bibliographic methods’, furthering the use of UDC and, ultimately, contributing to the creation of a world bibliography.

A. F. C Pollard served as the first President of the Society from its creation in 1927, with Walter Clark as secretary. Samuel C. Bradford succeeded Pollard in 1945, serving as President until the amalgamation of the BSIB with the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (Aslib) in 1948. Bradford also edited the Proceedings of the British Society for International Bibliography from its inception in 1939.