Bibliography Software

I’m looking for free or cheap (under $100.00) bibliographic database software. I’d like something that uses MySQL, Perl, and/or PHP and that includes a GUI, or that one could fairly easily create a browser-based or AppleScript/AppleStudio GUI. Yes, I know, there are academic bibliographic products like EndNote or ProCite, but they cost an arm and a leg, are proprietary, and have horrible interfaces. I’m fine with paying for good software, but those applications really don’t work for me. In fact, almost no one I know, whether graduate students or faculty, uses them because they’re so poorly designed that they’re almost impossible to use.

I don’t need an application that interfaces with a word processor (though I won’t kick and scream if someone offers the feature!) but I need to be able to create entries for journal articles, essays in essay collections, and books. I need to be able to include a fairly long summary or annotation for each item—at least 1,000 words. I need to be able to search for strings based on fields (author, title, keyword). And I need to run it either on a Mac running OS X 10.3 or on a Unix server. Right now I’m still using a HyperCard stack I made, and while it’s fabulous (she says modestly) I know that it has a fairly limited lifespan, and it uses XCMDS that I can’t rewrite to use with Revolution. In other words, I’m really looking for a good bibliorgraphic database, before I give up and roll my own.

I’ve done the obvious thing— looked at VersionTracker, SourceForge and other collections, but so far, I’ve not found anything. If you have any suggestions, please use the Comment link below.