Bibliography is a list of secondary sources referred by the researcher for research on any particular topic. Each entry contains useful information and even a summary as in the case of annotated bibliographies. Developing bibliographies require substantial time and efforts on the researcher’s part and losing the information once created is not a wise man’s act. This information can be stored for future reference by the same researcher or by other researchers. Before the advent of computers such libraries where maintained in paper but now they can be maintained digitally and can be shared online. Maintaining bibliography libraries in software form makes it highly manageable; information can be sorted, selected, ranked, coded and located very easily. Bibliography libraries confer many advantages, they reduce search, sometimes detailed bibliography may be referred instead of the whole text, researchers know where to look for what for example which page or paragraph or diagram, and entries can be used to identify other similar sources, they are a good source of key words, terminologies and abstracts. Service providers who provide bibliography library services often charge a certain fee; they generally maintain a categorized form of the various bibliographies available with them.
Researchers can make use of the several reference and citation management software to manage their personal bibliographies and create personal libraries for individuals or a small research group; they can reuse any particular citation in different formats whenever required with great swiftness and ease. Such softwares are equipped with a data base which can record even detailed bibliographies and generate reference and citation in different formats, some advanced reference management softwares are linked with word processors that enable researchers to generate reference list automatically as they type and can also import required information from other data bases. Most of these reference management softwares enable searching information and sources in online libraries.
