managing articles in my personal library, and their citational material, using org mode instead of bibtex

["Christopher W. Ryan" <cryan@binghamton.edu>]

Not sure "citational" is even a word, but hopefully it conveys my meaning!

I've been using LaTeX for academic writing and reading for quite some
time, with emacs as my editor. I'm pretty familiar with managing a .bib
file containing all the references I've collected, and using it in LaTeX
\cite commands.

I've come to org-mode more recently. I'm trying to imagine how I might
use it to manage my "personal library." I have a directory full of pdf
files, each a downloaded article. Some articles I reference in papers I
write; others I just read and want to keep.  I also have a .bib file
where I put the citational material for all those articles. Whenever I
download an article, I add its entry to my .bib file. I tend to manage
this with JabRef because it searches Medline so easily, but I also will
edit the .bib file directly when necessary.

I like the idea of an org file containing the citational information
(authors, title, journal, etc)  *plus* links to the pdfs on my hard
drive, or on the internet. I could also include my notes about the
articles. But what would that org file look like? How do I insert a
reference to an article into the org file which contains the article I
am writing?

I'd be grateful for any explanations, or links to tutorials.

Thanks.

--Chris Ryan
SUNY Upstate Medical University
Binghamton, NY