How do I resize the text of bibliography entries without changing the heading (with BibTeX)?

Question

I'm using BibTeX to create my bibliography with the final command

\bibliographystyle{mn2e}
\bibligraphy{biblio}

I'd like the entries to be footnotesize so I use

{\footnotesize
\bibliographystyle{mn2e}
\bibligraphy{biblio}}

but this also resizes the heading "Bibliography". How do I resize the text but not the heading? I realize one workaround is to compile the bibliography with BibTeX and put the \footnotesize command in the bibliography block. But can I automate this?

Answer 1

You can add the following lines to the preamble:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\AtBeginEnvironment{thebibliography}{\footnotesize}