[OS X TeX] BibLaTeX and archival (a la jurabib)

[Rolf Schmolling]

Hello knowledgeable Ones,

has anybody tried to achieve sth. like the somehwat basic "archival"- 
implementation in jurabib via BibLaTeX? I am a German historian  
working on my phd-Thesis (Modern history: "Slave Labor for Siemens")  
and consider changing over from jurabib to BibLaTeX.

However, this would mean working over (changing a lot in) my bib-file  
(I use BibDesk) and create a new style for the bibliography to get the  
output along the lines of my field. For that special entry type  
(unpublished files in archives) it would need to show in my bibliography
1) the archive (name)
2) subarchive if applicable
3) file group (first part of signature/call-number)
4) signature (further parts of the call-number)

I'd need to group files cited according to archive, subarchive and  
file group with the option to change the depth (e.g. show only archive/ 
subarchive, file group) keeping in a separate bibliography  
(unpublished files) along multibib/jurabib. i already know that this  
last part is not very difficult with BibLaTeX.

At the same time I'd like to be able to make sure that I get a full/ 
long citation the first time I cite a file in the text and a shorter  
version of that title at later times. This unfortunately is not  
working with jurabib easily (ion comparison to the other file-types),  
one has to address a shorttitle-field manually for consecutive entrys.

Any ideas? I have not been able to find a BibLaTeX-style I could use a  
s a starting point though I wary that effort.

Thanks for any hints,

greetings

Rolf


--
Rolf Schmolling M.A. Historian, Rolf.Schmolling at Alumni.TU-Berlin.DE
http://rolf_schmolling.macbay.de/