Ask HN: I need to store lots of citations

Here is my train of thought so far...

Storing normalized citations Pros: easy to search through with fine granularity; Cons: Difficult to maintain schema; difficult to enter semantic information

Storing citation “blobs” (ex. MLA formatted strings) Pros: easy to enter (simple copy+paste); easy to store Cons: difficult to search through with granularity

Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Any pointers or ideas?