**Question**

How to format bibiliographies in a more visual way ?


**Context**

I am trying to get out of the standard (boring...) bibliographies as you noticed. 

It’s a “figure imposée” and there are standards for publication, of course. But what a pity, all these information lost in a rebarbative listing... 

![BibLAteXAbstract2.png](/image?hash=525dcf06cde3451c2003476fea52787523b8d98873b2f778699413b1acbc781c)

Reusing the `abstract` in the text as in https://topanswers.xyz/tex?q=1491 has already given me loads of positive feedbacks from both profs and students ! 
The only other piece of information (I see... maybe you have ideas) that could be used is the `date of publication`. 

And it seems natural to link a date with a timeline.

A chronology of references could be both informative, accurate and would give actually a visual temporality. In one glimpse you get the proximity or distance in the research cited. It would not work for too long bibliographies but for short ones. 

I am conscious that bibliographies can be very long and a timeline would lose its visual effect with too much information on it.

Version 0 would probably be something like 
(http://sordinaproductions.blogspot.com/2010/09/simple-timelines-in-latex.html)

![Timelinev0.png](/image?hash=b531bf465d7898a8b43d247f71e295b7e235fcaffc4722a419677e93aa35c21d)

```
\documentclass{article}
\newcommand{\foo}{\hspace{-2.3pt}$\bullet$ \hspace{5pt}}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{r |@{\foo} l}
DateRef1 & Title of the article 1 \\
DateRef2 & Title of the article 1 \\
... & ... \\
DateRefn & Title of the article 1 \\
\end{tabular}

\end{document}
```
Instead of title for Ref1, we could input the full list of field as in a normal bibliography or just a sublist (Title, name, editor for instance).

Of course `TikZ` provides fancier Timeline as in https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/462984/fancy-vertical-timeline 

![TimelineTikZ.png](/image?hash=66bac63128db5a599f15f7c6bce0fb9c0082ecb40d1d9100fd771f5e28313289)

or

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/196794/how-can-you-create-a-vertical-timeline

![TimelineTikZ2.png](/image?hash=af0db508ca384be192b6451a246c234e5e1ff279af00c81e1de7db7615b9c644)
As for other visuals, I was not very inspired until I found https://venngage.com/templates/infographics/timeline

**Other element in mind for future questions**
Create a mini  horizontal timeline in the text.