Access to bibliographies

I am using TeXworks in MiKTeX 2.9 all updated, on several machines, all as
Admin.  Neither the machine nor the version of MiKTeX is crucial here since
I've lived with this issue for many years and many versions.

BibTeX will not look for bib files outside the folder holding the current
tex file.  Since I need to organize my tex files in various folders, I end
up with multiple copies of many bib files and then of course I have trouble
updating all in synch.

Is there a simple way to get BibTeX to look in other folders?  FNDB does
not do it.  I know next to nothing about roots or directories, and have
happily run MiKTeX for years that way, but maybe I have to learn a bit now?

thanks, Colin
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