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Is it possible to have headings inside thebibliography? I need to categorize the references into, say, "required" and "optional".

I tried simply putting some text in between \bibitems, but the compiler complains about encountering text not part of a \bibitem.

A solution not involving BibTeX is preferred for now, I'm still learning LaTeX and for the paper I'm writing I only have a handful of references (and not that much time, surprise-surprise :-). I plan to learn BibTeX in the future, of course.

Just before posting I looked at How do I break up a bibliography into separately numbered sections? and one of the answers was mentioning multibib which appears to have such functionality. I'll ask anyway in case there are other solutions, I just need some extra text displayed, not to really break the bibliography into subbibliographies.

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wishihadabettername
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2 Answers2

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As you don't like to use BibTeX, here's a solution simply using the standard bibliography environment.

You could use the \item command to insert headings or text into a bibliography, for example:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{thebibliography}{KnuthXX}
\item[]\hspace{-\labelwidth}\hspace{-\labelsep}\textbf{Required}:
\bibitem[Knuth86]{DK86} D.E. Knuth,
  The TeXbook, 1986
\item[]\hspace{-\labelwidth}\hspace{-\labelsep}\textbf{Optional}:
\bibitem[Knuth89]{DK89} D.E. Knuth,
  Typesetting Concrete Mathematics, 1989
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

references

Or use two bibliography environments:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\renewcommand{\refname}{Required}
\begin{thebibliography}{KnuthXX}
\bibitem[Knuth86]{DK86} D.E. Knuth,
  The TeXbook, 1986
\end{thebibliography}
\renewcommand{\refname}{Optional}
\begin{thebibliography}{KnuthXX}
\bibitem[Knuth89]{DK89} D.E. Knuth,
  Typesetting Concrete Mathematics, 1989
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

alt text

Stefan Kottwitz
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  • I have the same problem, and want to add text between the bibliography title, and the first bibitem. I tried the solution with the \item command. It works for headlines, but not for several paragraphs of text, since the layout is messed up. How can I correct that? (I use the AMSbook class) – Britzel Sep 07 '12 at 12:53
  • @Britzel Welcome to TeX.sx! Your question won't be seen by many people here, so it would be best to repost it as a fresh question. Follow-up questions like this are more than welcome! Please use the "Ask Question" link for your new question; there you can link to this question to provide the background. – Joseph Wright Sep 08 '12 at 06:02
3

I have several categories of references in my CV. I used bibunits and I'm pretty happy with how that came out. I've never tried writing a bibliography by hand though, so I have no idea how much trouble that would be. I highly recommend learning BibTeX. It won't take very long at all, especially if you have a sample to look at.

TH.
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