Maybe <Blatt> <Green> <Asimov> or even <ref> Blatt</ref> <ref> Green</ref> <ref>Asimov</ref>, which would then lead to <Blatt> Blatt, Bill, "A Big Book of Dogs", London 1881 etc. etc. in the actual references section. Same amount of typing as the current implementation, and much cleaner to read in the text.
Using angle brackets for refs is a bad idea - they look too much like HTML tags. <ref name="foo"/> works for me.