Annotated Bibliography

Creating an Annotated Bibliograph

  1. Copy the following files to your working directory:
  2. You will need to create your own .bib and .tex files (more on this below). Once you've created these files, you will generate your bibliography as follows: 
    > latex annotated_bibliography
> bibtex annotated_bibliography
> latex annotated_bibliography
> latex annotated_bibliography
> dvips annotated_bibliography
    (That's right, you have to run latex three times--once before you run bibtex and twice after you run bibtex.) Of course, you will use your own file name rather than "annotated_bibliography". Note that we always use the name of the .tex file, never the name of the .bib file. The last command "dvips ..." prints the annotated_bibliography. Alternatively, if you would like to view it first, you can use the commands 
    > dvips -o annotated_bibliography.ps annotated_bibliography
> gv annotated_bibliography
    The first command here generates a postscript file called "annotated_bibliography.ps". The second command invokes ghostview to view your postscript file. The output should look like the following file: annotated_bibliography.ps
  3. To create your .tex file, the easiest thing to do is to simply edit the file annotated_bibliography.tex. Let's examine what is in this file: 
    \documentclass[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
   {\Large\textbf{Example Annotated Bibliography}}
\medskip

   {\large   Stephen C. Billups
\medskip

	Math 4779
\medskip

           January 31, 2001
   }
\end{center}
\nocite{*}

\bibliographystyle{plain-annote}
\bibliography{bib_example}
\end{document}
    Notes:
    1. The command \nocite{*} causes LaTeX to include every entry in your .bib file.
    2. The command \bibliographstyle{plain-annote} tells LaTeX to use the file plain-annote.bst for instructions on how to format the bibliography.
    3. The command \bibliography{bib_example} tells LaTeX that the .bib file you want to use is called bib_example.bib. (You will want to change this to point to your .bib file).
  4. Now let's talk about the .bib file. The .bib file includes entries for each of your references: For example, here is a sample entry: 
     @article{mifflin:semismooth,
    author    = "R. Mifflin",
    title     = "Semismooth and semiconvex functions in constrained
	         optimization",
    journal   = "Siam Journal on Control",
    year      = "1977",
    volume    = "15",
    pages     = "957--972",
    annote    = "{This is the first appearance in the literature of the
                  concept of a semismooth function.  Semismooth functions 
                  are closed under addition and composition, and also 
                  guarantee the local convergence of nonsmooth 
                  generalizations of Newton's method.}"
 }

    The above entry specifies a journal article. But there are many other choices in BibTeX: book, techreport, phdthesis, unpublished, etc. Depending on the type of publication, you will need to specify different information in the BibTeX entry. To get more examples on specifying .bib files, you can look at the bib_example.bib file that you copied to your directory.

    Each BibTeX entry must be identified with a unique string, called the key, which is specified on the first line, immediately following the "{". In the above example the key is "mifflin:semismooth". I use the following convention in creating keys:

    The key is referenced in a \cite command in LaTeX to reference the citation. For example: 

     The concept of semismoothness was first introduced in the one-dimensional case by Mifflin \cite{mifflin:semismooth}.
    If you want a references to appear in your bibliography, but don't actually cite it anywhere in your document, you can use the \nocite command (for example, \nocite{billups.watson:probability-one}).
  5. To specify web addresses, see Harvey Greenberg's web page on the subject: Suggested Formats for Web Citations, by Harvey Greenberg
  6. You can get more information about LaTeX and BibTeX from the following sites: