Format of the bibliographic collections

The BibNet bibliographic archive contains files in BibTeX form, as
shown in the following example:

@Article{Higham:1994:BVT,
  author =       "Nicholas J. Higham",
  title =        "{BibTeX}: {A} Versatile Tool for {\LaTeX} Users",
  journal =      "SIAM News",
  year =         "1994",
  volume =       "27",
  number =       "1",
  pages =        "10, 11, 19",
  month =        January"
}

The choice of the BibTeX format not only allows automatization of
references in LaTeX or TeX documents.  BibTeX references are
structured with fields: therefore, the category of the information
can be parsed and automatically processed.

Bibliography databases should be supplied in BibTeX form.  However,
if you ALREADY have a bibliography database in another format than
BibTeX, you may consult Appendix E: we have tools for conversion to
BibTeX of bibliography databases in a few other PARSEABLE formats.

The article in the reference above appeared in the January 1994 issue of
SIAM News, and is an excellent overview of the features and power of
BibTeX.  Information on BibTeX and suggested standards and tips
are described respectively in Appendices A and B.