A
bibliographic database is a
database of
bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including
journal and
newspaper articles, conference
proceedings, reports, government and legal publications,
patents,
books, etc. In contrast to
library catalogue entries, a large proportion of the bibliographic records in bibliographic databases describe articles, conference papers, etc., rather than complete
monographs, and they generally contain very rich subject descriptions in the form of
keywords, subject classification terms, or
abstracts.