On bibshare
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:category: computer
:date: 2014-09-04T15:08:00
:tags: TeX, BibTeX, bibliography, metadata


(this is originally `a comment`_ on the post about “scientific Markdown”)

.. _`a comment`:
    http://blog.martinfenner.org/2013/06/19/citations-in-scholarly-markdown/#comment-935671574

In my previous life I was using heavily TeX and BibTeX for writing
a scholarly articles when working on my PhD in sociology. When doing
a large BibTeX database of bibliopgraphy there is a certain moment when
one needs to establish some order in creating new keys for the
individual references. When I hit that moment, I started to look around
whether somebody didn’t do some thinking about the design of the
bibliography keys. I found almost nothing on the Web perhaps because
there was actually a file *bibshare* (originally in
``$TEXMF/doc/bibtex/base/bibshare`` now I cannot find it anywhere, so
I have download a version from older ``tetex`` RPM to `my website`_).
It describes pretty nice standard, which really should be rewritten into
RFC or something of that sort. The two biggest advantages are stable
keys (so bibliographies can be exchanged) and a more rememberable ones.
So, whenever I see now ``granovetter:AJS-1973-1360`` I do remember (and it
has been couple of years, since I used BibTeX last time) that it is an
awesome article "`The Strength of Weak Ties`_" by Mark Granovetter.

.. _`my website`:
    http://matej.ceplovi.cz/cizi/bibshare

.. _`The Strength of Weak Ties`:
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/2776392