$Id: Medline-to-BibTeX-HOWTO,v 1.2 2003/07/20 15:17:38 potse Exp $

This document describes how to convert entries from a commercial
online bibliographic database to BibTeX format. The answer is
quite simple:


                    DON'T !!!!!


Why not?  It can be done, and in fact I wrote a Perl script that
converts OVID format to BibTeX; it's part of the BIBFROB package
(http://www.xs4all.nl/~mpotse/software/bibfrob). Such a script can be
written in an afternoon or so, for any database format. But why
bother? These databases are extremely buggy. Even the vital
information such as volume numbers and page numbers is sometimes
wrong, and by using author names from these databases you can be sure
to insult a few colleagues who happen to have names that are more
complicated than just "James Brown".

If you use sophisticated software like TeX and BibTeX anyway, I
suggest that you don't spoil the project with a lousy bibliography;
take your time to look at the papers that you cite, and re-key the
bibliographic information directly in BibTeX format.