reads the top-level auxiliary (.aux) file that was output during the running of latex(1) or tex(1) and creates a bibliography (.bbl) file that will be incorporated into the document on subsequent runs of X or . The auxname on the command line must be given without the .aux extension. If you don't give the auxname, the program prompts you for it.
looks up, in bibliographic database (.bib) files specified by the \bibliography command, the entries specified by the \cite and \nocite commands in the X or source file. It formats the information from those entries according to instructions in a bibliography style (.bst) file (specified by the \bibliographystyle command, and it outputs the results to the .bbl file.
The X manual explains what a X source file
must contain to work with . Appendix B of the manual describes the format
of the .bib files. The `ing' document describes extensions and details of this
format, and it gives other useful hints for using .
Options
The -min-crossrefs
option defines the minimum number of crossref required for automatic inclusion
of the crossref'd entry on the citation list; the default is two. With the
-terse option, operates silently. Without it, a banner and progress reports
are printed on stdout.
If the environment variable TEXMFOUTPUT is set, attempts to put its output files in it, if they cannot be put in the current directory. Again, see tex(1) . No special searching is done for the .aux file.
All those files should be available somewhere on your system.
The host math.utah.edu has a vast collection of .bib files available for anonymous ftp, including references for all the standard books and a complete bibliography for TUGboat.