Bibliography in two columns, section title in one
You can redefine the thebibliography
environment to use two columns and use the optional argument of multicols
to place the title; add the following lines to the preamble of your document:
\usepackage{multicol}
\makeatletter
\renewenvironment{thebibliography}[1]
{\begin{multicols}{2}[\section*{\refname}]%
\@mkboth{\MakeUppercase\refname}{\MakeUppercase\refname}%
\list{\@biblabel{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
{\settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
\leftmargin\labelwidth
\advance\leftmargin\labelsep
\@openbib@code
\usecounter{enumiv}%
\let\p@enumiv\@empty
\renewcommand\theenumiv{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
\sloppy
\clubpenalty4000
\@clubpenalty \clubpenalty
\widowpenalty4000%
\sfcode`\.\@m}
{\def\@noitemerr
{\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
\endlist\end{multicols}}
\makeatother
Now in the body of your document, simply use
\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\bibliography{mybib}
Building upon Gonzalo's answer, I suggest to use the etoolbox
package to selectively change the definitions of \thebibliography
and \endthebibliography
. Add the following to your preamble:
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\patchcmd{\thebibliography}{\section*{\refname}}
{\begin{multicols}{2}[\section*{\refname}]}{}{}
\patchcmd{\endthebibliography}{\endlist}{\endlist\end{multicols}}{}{}
EDIT: How does it work? The \patchcmd
command needs five arguments, but you may ignore (as I did) the two last ones, which generate patching success/error messages. Argument no. 1 is the command to be "patched" (selectively changed), argument no. 2 is the part of the command definition that should be replaced, argument no. 3 is the replacement. (Because thebibliography
is an environment, I had to patch the two commands that define it.)
The easiest way to tackle this problem is to use bibpreamble
and bibpostamble
:
\usepackage{multicols}
\renewcommand{\bibpreamble}{\begin{multicols}{2}}
\renewcommand{\bibpostamble}{\end{multicols}}
In this manner, only the references are placed in two columns and your title is left out. Nevertheless, it keeps the heading of the bibliography in the chapter
-style. To change that, you could use e.g. bibsection
:
\usepackage{natbib}
\renewcommand\bibsection{\section{\bibname}}