For a total of 33 bright Be stars, archival high-dispersion spectrograms obtained by the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite were analyzed together with optical spectrograms in order to study the FeII, FeIII and MgII spectra in the entire 1600 Å to 6500 Å wavelength range. Ultraviolet FeII resonance lines are always found to be in absorption which usually is of interstellar origin. By applying curve-of-growth methods to equivalent widths measured for FeII multiplets UV-1 through UV-8, column densities of interstellar FeII are derived ranging typically between about 1014 and 1015 cm-2. For a few program stars showing shell-type spectra in the optical region, additional FeII resonance absorption lines are detected starting from excited fine-structure levels above the ground state, pointing to FeII absorption occurring in the dense circumstellar envelope in front of these star. Analysis of their equivalent widths is used to infer typical column densities of circumstellar ground state FeII ions of order 1015 cm-2.