Customize Bibliography layout with biblatex

Question

I'm in the final stages of formatting my dissertation, and I'm having some trouble meeting the picky formatting requirements with biblatex.

I'm required to have a cover page before the bib, with the word "BIBLIOGRAPHY" centered horizontally and vertically. Importantly, this is the page that the ToC is supposed to point to.

Additionally, on the first page of the Bibliography,the word "Bibliography" must appear one inch from the top of the page, and then there must be a double space between it and the first reference. Near as I can tell, I would want to adjust the heading settings to do this, but I have no idea how exactly to do that.

Making matters worse, I'm using a custom document class that a University Professor made. It is based on the book class though.

I'm using the heading=bibintoc option to get the bib into the ToC.

Answer 1

It seems like it may be easier to remove the heading=bibintoc field if you need to reference the particular page. Just create a page with the word "BIBLIOGRAPHY" centred. Something like this:

\documentclass[fontsize=12pt,paper=a4]{book}
\begin{document}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\topskip0pt  
\vspace*{\fill}
\begin{center}
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Bibliography}
{\LARGE BIBLIOGRAPHY}
\end{center}
\vspace*{\fill}
\end{document}

Note the \addcontentsline which adds an entry to the table of contents. You can change the second parameter so it shows up in the correct place in your ToC (i.e. chapter, section, etc.)

You can redefine the heading for the bibliography from "References" to "Bibliography" using the \defbibheading command. Something like:

\defbibheading{bibliography}{\section*{Bibliography}}

Though you want to change the second parameter to suit your purposes. In terms of getting the title 1in from the main part, the geometry package could be useful. Here's a minimal example showing both of these in action:

\documentclass[fontsize=12pt,paper=a4]{book}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\defbibheading{bibliography}{\Large\bfseries Bibliography\\[2]}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\begin{document}
\thispagestyle{empty}
% change the geometry at this point in the document
\newgeometry{top=1in}
\nocite{aristotle:physics}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Note the addition of \\[2] to the end of \defbibheading to add a double-space afterwards.

Combined example:

\documentclass[fontsize=12pt,paper=a4]{book}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\defbibheading{bibliography}{\Large\bfseries Bibliography\\[2]}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\begin{document}

\newpage
\thispagestyle{empty}
\topskip0pt  
\vspace*{\fill}
\begin{center}
\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Bibliography}
{\LARGE BIBLIOGRAPHY}
\end{center}
\vspace*{\fill}

\newpage
\thispagestyle{empty}
% change the geometry at this point in the document
\newgeometry{top=1in}
\nocite{aristotle:physics}
\printbibliography
\end{document}