Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition) (Tools and Techniques

14.2. Creating a bibliographic database 311
receives the number 1, that of the next \cite with a different
key the number 2, and so on. The markings and listings are
otherwise the same as for plain.
alpha The ordering in the bibliography is the same as for plain but the
markers are an abbreviation of the author’s name plus year of
publication. A reference to Smith (1987) would appear as [Smi87]
instead.
abbrv The ordering and marking are the same as for plain, but the
bibliographic listing is shortened by abbreviating first names,
months, and journal names.
For author–year citations and the natbib package (Section 9.3.4),
there exist the bibliographic styles plainnat, unsrtnat, and abbrvnat,
producing the same bibliography format as the corresponding standard
styles, but with natbib compatibility.
14.2 Creating a bibliographic database
Creating a bibliographic database might seem like more work than typing
up a list of references with the thebibliography environment; the great
advantage is that the entries need to be included in the database once
and only once and are then available for all future publications. Even
if a different bibliography style is demanded in later works, all the information
is already on hand in the database for BIBT E X to write a new
thebibliography environment in another format. In fact, we feel that
even for a single document, it is simpler to make an entry into the database
than to adhere to the very precise and fiddly requirements of a literature
list, especially regarding punctuation and positioning of the authors’ initials.
The database entry proceeds very quickly and easily if one has a
generalized template, as illustrated in Section 14.2.6.
The entries in a bibliographic database are of the form
}
@BOOK{knuth:86a,
AUTHOR = "Donald E. Knuth",
TITLE = {The \TeX{}book},
EDITION = "third",
PUBLISHER = "Addison--Wesley",
ADDRESS = {Reading, Massachusetts},
YEAR = 1986
The first word, prefixed with @, determines the entry type, as explained
in the next section. The entry type is followed by the reference information
for that entry enclosed in curly braces { }. The very first entry is the key