BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Adding free text before first reference

[Cottonshirt]

Good morning,

I am writing a latex document in Texworks with a bibliography that works fine, as per the attached MWE:

Code: Select all

\begin{filecontents}{boookfile.bib} 
@book{nchc11893,
author = "Bateson, Edward",
title = "A History of Northumberland",
publisher = "{Andrew Reed, Sons \&  Co.}",
year = "1893",
}
\end{filecontents} 

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{book}
\pagestyle{empty}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{endnotes,graphicx,makeidx}
\listfiles

\begin{document}

Some text goes here \cite[p.~n]{nchc11893}.

\bibliography{boookfile}
\bibliographystyle{plain}

\end{document}

However, I would like to add a paragraph of free text between the section title "Bibliography" and the first entry in the list of references.

Among other places I have looked for an answer, I went here: http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/bi ... ethebeast/ and downloaded the pdf document "Tame the Beast" by Nicolas Markey where on page 8 the author gives the following code:

Code: Select all

\begin{thebibliography}{GMS93}
\item[]
\hskip-\leftmargin
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
Here are some useful references about \LaTeX. They are
available in every worthy bookshop. Much other good documentation
may be found on the web (the FAQ of \textsf{comp.text.tex} for
instance).
\end{minipage}
\bigskip
\bibitem[GMS93]{companion} Michel Goossens, Franck Mittelbach and
Alexander
Samarin, \emph{The \LaTeX{} Companion}, Addison Wesley, 1993.
\bibitem[Lam97]{lamport} Leslie Lamport, \emph{\LaTeX: A Document Preparation
System}, Addison Wesley, 1997.
\end{thebibliography}

There are two problems with this approach:

1. the first line of his code says: \begin{thebibliography}{GMS93} where my understanding is that GMS93 is the code for the longest entry in his bibliography, and it isn't obvious to me how I would know that at the time of writing my own document.

2. He appears to have hand-coded the bibliographical entries into his document whereas I want to gather them from a database (*.bib) at compile time.

So my question is:

1. Is there a way to adapt or edit Markey's code to my purpose?

2. If not, is there some other approach I can adopt?


Many thanks for your consideration,

Cottonshirt

[Johannes_B]

Code: Select all

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{book}
\pagestyle{empty}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\listfiles

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\tracingpatches
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\thebibliography}{%
	\@mkboth{\MakeUppercase\bibname}{\MakeUppercase\bibname}%
}{%
	\@mkboth{\MakeUppercase\bibname}{\MakeUppercase\bibname}%
	Place your text here\par% <<------------------------------------------
}{}{}
\makeatother
\begin{document}

Some text goes here \cite[p.~n]{doody}.

\bibliography{biblatex-examples}
\bibliographystyle{plain}

\end{document}

[Cottonshirt]

thank you. I had not heard of etoolbox before but on CTAN I noticed it is part of the standard MIkTex distribution.

your elegant solution does everything I wanted, thank you very much indeed.