simple way to use bibtex

You have to create a bibliography database (a file with extension .bib), say mybiblio.bib. Its contents will be the same as your bibitems, in a normalised form. I suggest to use a dedicated tool for this task, such as JabRef, in which you only have to fill the relevant fields.

This being done, you have to tell latex to incorporate this bibliography in your document. You have two slightly different ways, according to whether you use biblatex or not.

• The ‘old way’: choose a bibliography style in your preamble, e.g. bibliographystyle{plain}; add nocite{*} if you want all bibliography items to be printed (even those you do not cite). In your document, write bibliography{mybiblio} where you want the bibliography to appear.
• the ‘new way’: with biblatex, write in your preamble usepackage[options]{biblatex}. Then, you have to declare the .bib file in the preamble, with addbibresource{mybiblio.bib} (extension required). In the body of the document, add the command printbibliography where you you want it.

Note that with biblatex, you can use two engines for the bibliography: bibtex or the more recent (and powerful) biber. For bibtex the .bib files have to be ascii-encoded, whereas biber understands utf8.

To obtain the bibliography in your .pdf, you'll follow the cycle:

(pdf)latex > bibtex or biber > (pdf)latex (twice).