D.7. Bibliographies

Not everyone will choose to use the correct formatting for a bibliography. Most will use a list of some kind. And that's ok. But when you're ready to move to the next level, here's how to do it.

Below are two examples of bibliographic entries. The first is a very simple entry. It has only a title, URL and possibly a short description (abstract). The second is a little more complex and is for a full entry (for instance a book) with an ISBN, publisher and copyright date.

DocBook requirements for bibliographic references

At least one element within <biblioentry> is required, but it doesn't matter which one you have. So you might have a <title>, or a URL (<bibliosource>), or an <author>, or, ...

For a full list of all options, visit http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/biblioentry.html. For more examples visit http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/bibliography.html.

Displaying <abstract> content

By default <abstract>s do not display on web pages. You need to modify the biblio.xsl file. Do a search for the word "abstract" and then add this information inside the <xsl:template> tags. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it too much, but do be aware that it's required for the abstracts to show up.

<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="{name(.)}">
    <xsl:apply-templates mode="bibliography.mode"/>
</div>

Example D-11. A Bibliography

<bibliography>
<title>Bibliography title</title>

<bibliodiv>
<title>Section title</title>
<biblioentry>
<title>Book or Web Site Title</title>
<bibliosource><ulink url=""/></bibliosource>
<abstract></abstract>
</biblioentry>

<biblioentry>
<title></title>
<bibliosource><ulink url=""/></bibliosource>
<author><firstname></firstname><surname></surname></author>
<copyright><year></year>
<holder></holder></copyright>
<editor><firstname></firstname><surname></surname></editor>
<isbn></isbn>
<publisher>
<publishername></publishername>
</publisher>
<abstract></abstract>
</biblioentry>
</bibliodiv>
</bibliography>

View References to see this in action.