This isn’t rocket science, but you can insert BibTeX entries as you go, instead of (dumping all the references at the end in a “References” section. It’s useful when writing many chaotic pages of notes as you crawl through dozens of publications on a particular topic you’re researching, or when making a slide presentation in Beamer.
\usepackage{bibentry}
\begin{document}
% don't show the full list of references
\nobibliography*
% include the bibtex file
\bibliography{database}
% reference individual bibtex entry 'bla'
\bibentry{bla}
% define the style of the bibentry citation
\bibliographystyle{style}
\end{document}
Another way is to use the biblatex package. Note, that at least in Ubuntu, you need to biblatex doesn’t come even with the full install of texlive-all and needs to be added seperately in the repository as a package of the same name.
% 'style' can be defined as options to this command
\usepackage{biblatex}
% \jobname is the name of this file
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
% full bibliography section if you like
\printbibliography
% 'bla' is the bibtex entry label
\fullcite{bla}
\end{document}
This is not an Earth shattering post. Moreover, it’s not an objective one, that is, it is based on my experience and my experience only.
