Multiple bibliography and MLA style

Question

I have to write my BA Thesis in the MLA Style and I tried different stuff such as
Biblatex and mla-paper making weird headings this.

The problem is I need to use two bibliographies, two .bib files. One for primary and the other one for secondary sources. How do I do that?

It also gives me the word "Print" at the end of a reference. I want to get rid of it.

Right now I'm this far (it has only one bibliography so far):

\documentclass[12pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{geometry}                
\geometry{a4paper, top=25mm, left=35mm, right=35mm, bottom=25mm}                 
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{epstopdf}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{stmaryrd}
\usepackage{makeidx}
\makeindex
\usepackage{amsmath}
\numberwithin{equation}{section}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{underlin}
\usepackage{qtree}
\usepackage{tipa}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{subfigure}
\usepackage{ifthen}
\setcitestyle{notesep={  }}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=mla]{biblatex}

\usepackage{ifpdf}
\usepackage{mla}
\bibliography{prim}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@cite[2]{
({ #1\ifthenelse{\boolean{@tempswa}}{ \nolinebreak[3] #2}{}})
}
\makeatother
\usepackage{cite}
\pagestyle{headings}

\DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{png}{.png}{`convert #1 `dirname #1`/`basename #1 .tif`.png}

\tableofcontents
\newpage                                       

\begin{document}
\newcommand{\attrib}[1]{\nopagebreak{\raggedleft\footnotesize #1\par}}

\begin{mla}{kim}{foo}{bar}{ha}{\today}{week}
\setcounter{page}{1}
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.50}\normalsize

\cite[23]{maggie}
\end{mla}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Answer 1

In the following example I assume that you need two different bibliographycal sections in your documents: Primary Sources, and Secondary Sources; I also assume that you have two databases: bibl1.bib and bibl2.bib.

The idea is to use a keyword filter. In the following example I chose primary, and secondary as the words used to divide bibliographies.

To print the two bibliographies you can use the keyword = option for \printbibliography. For example, saying something like

\printbibliography[keyword=primary,...]
\printbibliography[keyword=secondary,...]

You also need to add a keywords field to each entry in the bib files indicating if each entry will be considered as "primary" or "secondary".

The code:

\begin{filecontents*}{bibl1.bib}
@book{goossens93,
  keywords = {primary},
 author = "Michel Goossens and Frank Mittlebach",
 title = "The {LaTeX} Companion",
 year = "1993",
 publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
 address = "Reading, Massachusetts"
}

@book{knuth84,
   keywords = {primary},
   author = "Donald E. Knuth",
   title= "The {TeX}book",
   publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
   year = 1984
}
\end{filecontents*}

\begin{filecontents*}{bibl2.bib}
@unpublished{patashnik88,
   keywords = {secondary},
   author = "Oren Patashnik",
   title = "Using {BibTeX}",
   note = "Documentation for general BibTeX users",
   month = jan,
   year = 1988
}
\end{filecontents*}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=mla,guessmedium=false]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{bibl1.bib}
\addbibresource{bibl2.bib}

\begin{document}
\cite{knuth84}, \cite{goossens93}, \cite{patashnik88}

\printbibliography[keyword=primary,heading=subbibliography,%
title={Primary Sources}]
\printbibliography[keyword=secondary,heading=subbibliography,%
title={Secondary Sources}]

\end{document}

I used the guessmedium=false option to avoid biblatex-mla guessing the publication medium, thereby avoiding printing "Print" (or "Web") when the field howpublished is undefined,

Answer 2

Multiple bib files can be distinguished using the label option for \addbibresource. We can generate the primary and secondary bibliographies in two separate refsections, where \printbibliography is limited to works cited via a category. This approach is demonstrated in the code below.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ifpdf}
\usepackage{mla}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=mla,showmedium=false]{biblatex}

\DeclareBibliographyCategory{cited}
\AtEveryCitekey{\addtocategory{cited}{\thefield{entrykey}}}

\defbibheading{primary}{\newpage\centering Primary Works Cited}
\defbibheading{secondary}{\newpage\centering Secondary Works Cited}

% ----------
%
% Replace this part of the preamble with:
%
%   \addbibresource[label=primary]{<primary>.bib}
%   \addbibresource[label=secondary]{<secondary>.bib}
%
% where <primary> is your primary bib file name and
% <secondary> is your secondary bib file name
%
\addbibresource[label=primary]{biblatex-examples.bib}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@Book{adams,
  title = {The Restaurant at the End of the Universe},
  author = {Douglas Adams},
  series = {The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy},
  publisher = {Pan Macmillan},
  year = {1980}}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource[label=secondary]{\jobname.bib}
%
% ----------

\begin{document}
\begin{mla}{Kim}{Vahnenbruck}{Professor's name}{Course}{\today}{Paper title}

\autocites{aristotle:poetics}{aristotle:rhetoric}
\autocite[10--15]{adams}

\begin{refsection}[primary]
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography[category=cited,heading=primary]
\end{refsection}

\begin{refsection}[secondary]
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography[category=cited,heading=secondary]
\end{refsection}

\end{mla}
\end{document}

First page:

Primary bibliography:

Secondary bibliography:

In your code, the lines:

\usepackage{natbib}
\setcitestyle{notesep={  }}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@cite[2]{({ #1\ifthenelse{\boolean{@tempswa}}{ \nolinebreak[3] #2}{}})}
\makeatother
\usepackage{cite}

should be omitted from your preamble. Both natbib and cite are incompatible with biblatex, but biblatex/biblatex-mla can be configured to emulate any of their features.