How to get beamer-style bibliography (with icons) when using article class and natbib?

Question

I am writing a document in article class, using natbib, and would like to produce a bibliography with icons in the left-hand margin, which illustrate the type of resource being listed. After some Googling, I've seen that some Beamer-style bibliographies have this option, and I like the beamer-style icons fine.

Is there any way to get a Beamer-style bibliography, or any bibliography with such icons in the margins (perhaps using something like marginpar), when using article class with natbib? If not, is there any way to do so in article class, using something other than natbib, like biblatex?

Answer 1

It is easy to do in biblatex using \marginpar.

A possible way is to use the begentry hook to call \marginpar and the \ifentrytype conditionals to control what to put in the margin.

Here is a basic structure to do that.

\renewbibmacro{begentry}{%
  \marginpar{%
    \ifentrytype{article}
      {ARTICLE}
      {\ifentrytype{book}{BOOK}{OTHER}}}%
}

By default if you use a one-side layout, the marginals are in the right margin to put on the left you have to use \reversemarginpar before using them.

For the icons, use \includegraphics or any other way to include them instead of the ARTICLE/BOOK/OTHER... placeholders.