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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’re making reference to; it
may run all the way from things like “<code>Book</code>” and
“<code>Proceedings</code>” (which may even contain other citations
of type “<code>InBook</code>” or “<code>InProceedings</code>”)
through dissertation styles like “<code>PhdThesis</code>” to
otherwise-uncategorisable things such as “<code>Misc</code>”. The
unique key is something you choose yourself: it’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’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 ‘simply’ 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 “BibTeX modes”.
<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 ‘inside’
<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 “Web of knowledge” (a
subscription service, available to UK academics via
BIDS). UK academics may translate BIDS downloads
using <i>bids.to.bibtex</i>
<li> <a href="http://scholar.google.com">Google Scholar</a> provides an
“Import into BibTeX” tab for each reference it finds for you:
that tab gives you a page containing a BibTeX entry for the
reference.
</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>
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