[OS X TeX] Beginner: bibliography strategy?

[Rick and Karla Gross]

Martin,

A bibliography can be created by adding the following commands just 
before the end document command in your manuscript:

\bibliographystyle{citationstyle}

\bibliography{Martin'sBibdeskfile}
......
end{document}


The "citationstyle" describes the citation format you want to use in 
your bibliography.  There are several styles that come with the 
standard latex package (a good example is the style "plain" but there 
are  a bunch of others as well).  I suggest using the style "plain" 
until you are able to generate a bibliography in your document.

The second command "\bibliography{MartinsBibdeskfile}" is done easily 
by just dragging and dropping your Bibdesk file containing your 
references into your Texshop document.  This act will automatically 
generate the second command and the path to your Bibdesk file.

If there is a non-intuitive part to the bibliography creation process 
in Latex it is that in order to automatically generate a bibliography 
you must typeset the document three to four times in in a row.  For 
example, suppose you have a completed manuscript where you have 
dragged and dropped all of your references from your Bibdesk database 
file called "MartinsBibdeskfile".  Now to create the bibliography 
just before the end of your document command you would issue the 
bibliographic commands:

\bibliographystyle{plain}

\bibliography{MartinsBibdeskfile}

\end{document}


Now, the non-intuitive part.  In order to create the bibliography in 
the typeset PDF file you need to:

1.  Run Latex
2.  Run Bibtex
3.  Run Latex
4.  Run Latex

You should now see a completed bibliography at the end of your 
document that uses the "plain" style that you specified in the 
\bibliographystyle{plain} command.

Once you are able to do this I would suggest downloading natbib package.

You might want to take a peek at the following articles as well.

comp.leeds.ac.uk/andyr/misc/latex/latextutorial3.html
amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/faq/bibstyles.html



Rick

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