How do I tell BibTeX to print the 'pages' field for entries of type '@book'?

Question

I want to cite a book. I got the following bibliographic information from MathSciNet:

@book {Brylinski,
AUTHOR = {Brylinski, Jean-Luc},
TITLE = {Loop spaces, characteristic classes and geometric
quantization},
SERIES = {Progress in Mathematics},
VOLUME = {107},
PUBLISHER = {Birkh\"{a}user Boston, Inc., Boston, MA},
YEAR = {1993},
PAGES = {xvi+300},
ISBN = {0-8176-3644-7},
MRCLASS = {57Rxx (18G50 55P35 58F06)},
MRNUMBER = {1197353},
MRREVIEWER = {Daniel S. Freed},
DOI = {10.1007/978-0-8176-4731-5},
URL = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-8176-4731-5},}

Unfortunately, the formatted bibliographic entry does not show the number of pages (stored in the entry's pages field). It comes out as

Jean-Luc Brylinski. Loop spaces, characteristic classes and geometric quantization, volume 107 of Progress in Mathematics. Birkhäuser Boston, Inc., Boston, MA, 1993.

What changes should I make so that it also mentions the number of pages?

Minimal working example is

\documentclass[12pt,reqno,a4paper]{amsart}
%\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % not needed with up-to-date TeX systems
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\usepackage{amsmath,amsthm,amsfonts,amssymb}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\usepackage{color}

\usepackage{mathrsfs}
\usepackage[all]{xy}
\usepackage{tikz-cd}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem} % do you *really* need it?
\usepackage{datetime}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\theoremstyle{definition}

\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{construction}{Construction}[section]
\newtheorem{corollary}{Corollary}[section]
\newtheorem{lemma}{Lemma}[section]
\newtheorem{definition}{Definition}[section]
\newtheorem{remark}{Remark}[section]
\newtheorem{proposition}{Proposition}[section]
\newtheorem{example}{Example}[section]
\newtheorem*{question}{Question}
\newtheorem*{solution}{Solution}
\newtheorem{exercise}{Exercise} 

\newcommand{\mc}{\mathcal}
\newcommand{\mf}{\mathfrak}
\newcommand{\xra}{\xrightarrow}
\newcommand{\ra}{\rightarrow}

\pagestyle{myheadings}

\textheight 9.3in 
\textwidth 6.5in
\calclayout

% metadata

%\date{\today}

\title{****}
\author{***} 

\begin{document}
    %\today
\bibliography{****}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\end{document}

---

Self contained MWE (requires a modern LaTeX installation for the [overwrite] feature)

\documentclass[12pt,reqno,a4paper]{amsart}

\begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{sample.bib}
@book {Brylinski,
AUTHOR = {Brylinski, Jean-Luc},
TITLE = {Loop spaces, characteristic classes and geometric
quantization},
SERIES = {Progress in Mathematics},
VOLUME = {107},
PUBLISHER = {Birkh\"{a}user Boston, Inc., Boston, MA},
YEAR = {1993},
PAGES = {100-3010},
ISBN = {0-8176-3644-7},
MRCLASS = {57Rxx (18G50 55P35 58F06)},
MRNUMBER = {1197353},
MRREVIEWER = {Daniel S. Freed},
DOI = {10.1007/978-0-8176-4731-5},
URL = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-8176-4731-5},}
\end{filecontents}


%\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % not needed with up-to-date TeX systems
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\usepackage{amsmath,amsthm,amsfonts,amssymb}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\usepackage{color}

\usepackage{mathrsfs}
\usepackage[all]{xy}
\usepackage{tikz-cd}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem} % do you *really* need it?
\usepackage{datetime}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\theoremstyle{definition}

\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{construction}{Construction}[section]
\newtheorem{corollary}{Corollary}[section]
\newtheorem{lemma}{Lemma}[section]
\newtheorem{definition}{Definition}[section]
\newtheorem{remark}{Remark}[section]
\newtheorem{proposition}{Proposition}[section]
\newtheorem{example}{Example}[section]
\newtheorem*{question}{Question}
\newtheorem*{solution}{Solution}
\newtheorem{exercise}{Exercise} 

\newcommand{\mc}{\mathcal}
\newcommand{\mf}{\mathfrak}
\newcommand{\xra}{\xrightarrow}
\newcommand{\ra}{\rightarrow}

\pagestyle{myheadings}

\textheight 9.3in 
\textwidth 6.5in
\calclayout

% metadata

\begin{document}

\nocite{*}

\bibliography{sample}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\end{document}

Answer 1

I suggest you proceed as follows:

• Find the file plain.bst in your TeX distribution. Make a copy of this file and call the copy, say, plain-bookpages.bst. (Do not edit an original, unrenamed file of your TeX distribution directly.)

• Open the file plain-bookpages.bst in a text editor. The program you use to edit your tex files will do fine.

• In the file plain-bookpages.bst, find the BibTeX function book. In my copy of the file, this function starts on line 557.

• Immediately before this function, insert the following code chunk, which contains two BibTeX functions -- bibinfo.check and format.book.pages:

  FUNCTION {bibinfo.check}
  { swap$ duplicate$ missing$
      { pop$ pop$ "" }
      { duplicate$ empty$
          { swap$ pop$ }
          { swap$ pop$ }
        if$
      }
    if$
  }
  FUNCTION {format.book.pages}
  { pages "pages" bibinfo.check
    duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
      { " " * "pages" * }   
    if$
  }
  

• In the book function, find the following line:

        publisher "publisher" output.check
  

  Immediately before this line, insert the following line:

        format.book.pages output
  

• Save the file plain-bookpages.bst either in the folder that contains your main tex file(s) or in a folder that's searched by BibTeX. If you choose the second option, be sure to update the filename database of your TeX distribution suitably. If the preceding sentence sounds like gibberish to you, I recommend you choose the first option.

• In your main tex file, change the instruction \bibliographystyle{plain} to \bibliographystyle{plain-bookpages} and perform a full recompile cycle -- LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX twice more -- to fully propagate all changes.

Happy BibTeXing!

By the way, I think it's wrong that MathSciNet combines information about they entry's publisher and the publisher's address in a single field; it's better to keep track of separate publisher and address fields. I also think it's wrong of mathscinet to lowercase most words in the title field.

Here's the output of a full MWE (minimum working example) that employs the newly created plain-bookpages bib style:

And, for comparison, here's how the entry is formatted if the plain bibliography style is employed:

A final comment: I can't help but remark that there is a very good reason for why virtually all bibliography styles ever programmed are set up to ignore the pages field in entries of type @book. What's this reason, you may ask? Well, it's that the pages field in entries of type @book is pretty much guaranteed to be of no interest whatsoever to readers. Bibliographic information is supposed to help readers obtain copies of bibliographic entries of interest, either from a library (physical or electronic) or from a bookstore. That's why the publisher field is relevant for entries of type @book. The contents of the pages field, in comparison, serve no comparable purpose.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{mybib.bib}
@book{Brylinski,
    AUTHOR    = {Brylinski, Jean-Luc},
    TITLE     = {Loop Spaces, Characteristic Classes and Geometric Quantization},
    SERIES    = {Progress in Mathematics},
    VOLUME    = {107},
    PUBLISHER = {Birkh{\"a}user},
    address   = {Boston~MA},
    YEAR      = {1993},
    PAGES     = {xvi+300},
    ISBN      = {0-8176-3644-7},
    MRCLASS   = {57Rxx (18G50 55P35 58F06)},
    MRNUMBER  = {1197353},
    MRREVIEWER= {Daniel S. Freed},
    DOI       = {10.1007/978-0-8176-4731-5},
    URL       = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-8176-4731-5},
}
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage{cite}
\bibliographystyle{plain-bookpages}

\begin{document}
\nocite{Brylinski}
\raggedright
\bibliography{mybib}
\end{document}