Bib format consists of a number of blank line delimited references.
Each reference has a number of parts.  Each part starts with
"%PartChar", and can span several lines.  The meanings of the different
parts are as follows:

%A	Author's name
%B	Book containing article referenced
%C	City (place of publication)
%D	Date of publication
%E	Editor of book containing article referenced
%F	Footnote number or label (supplied by refer)
%G	Government order number
%H	Header commentary, printed before reference
%I	Issuer (publisher)
%J	Journal containing article
%K	Keywords to use in locating reference
%L	Label field used by -k option of refer
%M	Bell Labs Memorandum (undefined)
%N	Number within volume
%O	Other commentary, printed at end of reference
%P	Page number(s)
%Q	Corporate or Foreign Author (unreversed)
%R	Report, paper, or thesis (unpublished)
%S	Series title
%T	Title of article or book
%V	Volume number
%X	Abstract or miscellaneous information (ignored by all utilities)


Here are some example uses:

Journal:
%A Author
%T Title
%J Journal of ACM
%V 23
%N 1
%P 1-12
%D January, 1976

Conference:
%A
%T
%J Proc. 5th ACM Symp. on Principles of Programming Languages
%C Tucson, Ariz
%D January, 1978
%P 222-230

Book:
%T
%A
%I Addison-Wesley
%C Reading, Mass
%D 1976

Article in book:
%A author
%T title
%E editor
%B Advances in Information Science, Vol 2
%I Plenum Press
%C New York, NY
%D 1969
%P

Technical Report:
%A 
%T
%R Report RC-5767
%I IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
%C
%D


There are a number of utilities available to search through bib
databases, use them to generate reference sections in papers, etc., for
both troff and TeX.