You can probably remember back to when you were a student and had to find your bibliography references on papers stored in a filing cabinet. But ever since computers became more widely available, it's become easier than ever to keep track of information with spreadsheets and databases.
JabRef is an open source application that helps you manage references in bibliographies like books, articles, manuals, conferences, dissertations, brochures, etc. JabRef uses BibTeX, the standard LaTeX bibliography format.
JabRef lets you group your references by keyword, find references with search patterns, add your own fields, etc.