How to cross-reference the (whole) bibliography?

Question

A simple question, but I was unable to find it on Stackexchange here or somewhere else.

I want to cross-reference the header generated by \printbibliography, i.e. not a specific entry but just the title/starting page.

How can I do that?

I do use it like this:

\printbibliography[title={Quellenverzeichnis}, heading=subbibnumbered]

The problem is the package generates its heading automatically, so I cannot just place a \label there and refer to that.

Basically, I just want to do what's needed so I can use the usual \ref, \hyperref,\autoref, \fullref etc.

And I also have not found anything in the biblatex docs (page 88 ff. aka sec. 3.7.2 it starts to talk about the \printbibliography command.).

Answer 1

Since v3.16 of biblatex you now can use label .

Example and so on copied from the issue/feature request, so all credits goes to @moewew, who also implemented this.

Here an example:

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=authoryear, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\usepackage{cleveref}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\begin{document}
\autocite{sigfridsson}
\Cref{biblabel}
\printbibliography[heading=bibnumbered, label=biblabel]
\end{document}

Answer 2

Weirdly, I can't find an obvious way of doing this.

Here's an option which prints the heading, then inserts the label, then prints the rest of the bibliography. For some reason unknown to me, the \@currentlabel isn't updated by \printbibheading, so I need the hack to decrement the subsection counter, then increment it using \refstepcounter.

I'm left thinking there must be a better option.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\section{Here}
\subsection{There}
Page \pageref{bib}. Section \ref{bib}.
\nocite{westfahl:space,aksin}
\printbibheading[title=Quellenverzeichnis, heading=subbibnumbered]
\addtocounter{subsection}{-1}
\refstepcounter{subsection}
\label{bib}
\printbibliography[heading=none]
\end{document}

Answer 3

Since you are already explicitly give the title of your bibliography, you can just sneak in a \label there.

With David Purton's MWE and the obvious changes

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\section{Here}
\subsection{There}
Page \pageref{bib}. Section \ref{bib}.
\nocite{sigfridsson,worman}
\printbibliography[title={Quellenverzeichnis\label{bib}}, heading=subbibnumbered]
\end{document}

If you'd like a solution that automatically selects 'References' or 'Bibliography' depending on the class, you can try

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\reforbibname}{%
  \ifodd\abx@classtype\relax
    \bibname
  \else
    \refname
  \fi
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\section{Here}
\subsection{There}
Page \pageref{bib}. Section \ref{bib}.
\nocite{sigfridsson,worman}
\printbibliography[title={\reforbibname\label{bib}}, heading=subbibnumbered]
\end{document}

The internal command \abx@classtype is used by biblatex to detect certain classes. Conveniently, the 'even classes' are article-like and use \refname, the 'odd classes' are report/book-like and use \bibname.

Note that this does not take into account possible changes of the default title in bibliography heading definitions.

---

An alternative would be to include the \label directly in the bibliography heading definition. In this case that would be

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\defbibheading{subbibnumbered:link}[\refname]{%
  \subsection{#1}%
  \label{bib}}
\begin{document}
\section{Here}
\subsection{There}
Page \pageref{bib}. Section \ref{bib}.
\nocite{sigfridsson,worman}
\printbibliography[heading=subbibnumbered:link]
\end{document}

(of course you could overwrite the bibheading subbibnumbered if you like, but since the label is hard-coded in the heading, it may be better to choose a unique name to avoid using it twice.) In any case, this requires you to know/copy the original definition of the bibliography heading used in your document.