A couple of options for free, web based bibliography managers are Mendeley and Zotero. Given that Mendeley is owned by Elsevier, they are not an option. I started with Zotero, some configuration elements I will outline below, but eventually dropped them for Referencer. I like the idea of having complete control over my library. I am not interested in the “social” features of Zotero, I found upgrades to be difficult, and didn’t like the file structure utilized. Referencer is extremely simple, easy to install and configure, and gets the job done. I don’t anticipate many “upgrades” to the Referencer software - hopefully it will be maintained well into the future. I replicate the files to a cloud server for easy backup.

Referencer

#apt-get install referencer

Zotero

do not export, backup the database directory to retain metadata

~/.zotero/zotero/<3xdb….>/zotero…

the “pipes” subdir will not copy, be sure to compensate

pacman -S alsa-lib dbus-glib gcc-libs
pacman -S gtk2 nss #these were already installed

To configure the Zotero webdav server on Hostgator:

www.mysite.com/owncloud/remote.php/webdav ( /zotero automatically appended)
you will be prompted to create directory