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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label buildbib</title>
</head><body>
<h3>Creating a BibTeX bibliography file</h3>
<p/>A BibTeX bibliography file may reasonably be compared to a small
database, the entries in which are references to literature that may
be called up by citations in a document.
<p/>Each entry in the bibliography has a <em>type</em> and a unique
<em>key</em>.  The bibliography is read, by BibTeX, using the details
specified in a <em>bibliography style</em>.  From the style, BibTeX
finds what entry types are permissible, what <em>fields</em> each entry
type has, and how to format the whole entry.
<p/>The type specifies the type of document you&rsquo;re making reference to; it
may run all the way from things like &ldquo;<code>Book</code>&rdquo; and
&ldquo;<code>Proceedings</code>&rdquo; (which may even contain other citations
of type &ldquo;<code>InBook</code>&rdquo; or  &ldquo;<code>InProceedings</code>&rdquo;)
through dissertation styles like  &ldquo;<code>PhdThesis</code>&rdquo; to
otherwise-uncategorisable things such as &ldquo;<code>Misc</code>&rdquo;.  The
unique key is something you choose yourself: it&rsquo;s what you use when
you want to <a href="FAQ-usebibtex.html">cite an entry in the file</a>.  People
commonly create a key that combines the (primary) author&rsquo;s name and
the year of publication, possibly with a marker to distinguish
publications in the same year.  So, for example, the Dyson, Eddington,
Davidson paper about deflection of starlight appears in my
experimental <code>.bib</code> file as <code>Dyson20.1</code>.
<p/>So, noting the rules of the style, you have &lsquo;simply&rsquo; to write a
bibliography database.  Fortunately, there are several tools to help
in this endeavour:
<ul>
<li> Most of the better <a href="FAQ-editors.html">(La)TeX-oriented editors</a>
  have &ldquo;BibTeX modes&rdquo;.
<li> If you have an existing <code>thebibliography</code>
  environment, the <i>Perl</i> script <i>tex2bib</i> will
  probably help.
<li> There are a number of BibTeX bibliography management systems
  available, some of which permit a graphical user interface to the
  task.  Sadly, none seems to be available with the ordinary TeX
  distributions.
<p/>  Tools such as <i>Xbibfile</i> (a graphical user interface),
  <i>ebib</i> (a database application written to run &lsquo;inside&rsquo;
  <i>emacs</i>) and 
  <i>btOOL</i> (a set of <i>perl</i> tools for building 
  BibTeX database handlers) are available from CTAN.
<p/>  Other systems, such as
  <a href="http://refdb.sourceforge.net/"><i>RefDB</a></i>,
  <a href="http://www.nongnu.org/biborb">BibORB</a>,
  <a href="http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/"><i>BibDesk</a></i>,
  <a href="http://pybliographer.org"><i>pybliographer</a></i> and the
  <i>Java</i>-based
  <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/bibkeeper/"><i>Bibkeeper</a></i>
  and <a href="http://jabref.sourceforge.net"><i>JabRef</a></i> (which
  claims to supersede <i>Bibkeeper</i>)
  are only available from their development sites.

<li> Some commercial citation-management systems will export in
  BibTeX format; an example is
  <a href="http://www.endnote.com/">EndNote</a>.
<li> Data from on-line citation databases may often be translated to
  BibTeX format by utilities to be found on CTAN.  For
  example, the <i>Perl</i> script <i>isi2bibtex</i> will
  translate citations from ISI &ldquo;Web of knowledge&rdquo; (a
  subscription service, available to UK academics via
  BIDS).  UK academics may translate BIDS downloads
  using <i>bids.to.bibtex</i>
</ul>
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>bids.to.bibtex</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/bids/bids.to.bibtex">biblio/bibtex/utils/bids/bids.to.bibtex</a>
<dt><tt><i>btOOL</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/btOOL.zip">biblio/bibtex/utils/btOOL</a> (or <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/btOOL/">browse the directory</a>)
<dt><tt><i>ebib</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/ebib.zip">biblio/bibtex/utils/ebib</a> (or <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/ebib/">browse the directory</a>)
<dt><tt><i>isi2bibtex</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/isi2bibtex.zip">biblio/bibtex/utils/isi2bibtex</a> (or <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/isi2bibtex/">browse the directory</a>)
<dt><tt><i>tex2bib</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/tex2bib/tex2bib">biblio/bibtex/utils/tex2bib/tex2bib</a>
<dt><tt><i>tex2bib.readme</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/tex2bib/README">biblio/bibtex/utils/tex2bib/README</a>
<dt><tt><i>xbibfile</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/xbibfile.zip">biblio/bibtex/utils/xbibfile</a> (or <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/utils/xbibfile/">browse the directory</a>)
</dl>
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=buildbib">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=buildbib</a>
</body>