Our Card Catalog

In a typical ink and paper (book) library, each book is on a shelf. But any decent library also has a card catalog, which was historically (before computers) a set of shelves that had small cards set up in a topical arrangement. When a new book was added to the collection (i.e. library), all the general topics of that book are entered into the card catalog, updating each card topic with a reference to that book.

Dewey Decimal System

A man named Melvile Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal System in 1876, which tries to take all these topics and assign each of them a number between 000 and 999.

For example,

000 Generalities
100 Philosophy & psychology
200 Religion
300 Social sciences
400 Language
500 Natural sciences & mathematics
600 Technology (Applied sciences)
700 The arts
800 Literature & rhetoric
900 Geography & history

This was useful in that it allowed us to categorize different topics within a general area or disciple. 200 call numbers (individual books starting with 200.###) are designated as Religion. Under that general 200 number, it is further divided by religion topics.

200 Religion 201 Philosophy of Christianity 202 Miscellany of Christianity 203 Dictionaries of Christianity 204 Special topics 205 Serial publications of Christianity 206 Organizations of Christianity 207 Education, research in Christianity 208 Kinds of persons in Christianity 209 History & geography of Christianity 210 Natural theology 211 Concepts of God 212 Existence, attributes of God 213 Creation 214 Theodicy 215 Science & religion 216 Good & evil 217 Not assigned or no longer used 218 Humankind 219 Not assigned or no longer used 220 Bible 221 Old Testament 222 Historical books of Old Testament 223 Poetic books of Old Testament 224 Prophetic books of Old Testament 225 New Testament 226 Gospels & Acts 227 Epistles 228 Revelation (Apocalypse) 229 Apocrypha & pseudepigrapha 230 Christian theology 231 God 232 Jesus Christ & his family 233 Humankind 234 Salvation (Soteriology) & grace 235 Spiritual beings 236 Eschatology 237 Not assigned or no longer used 238 Creeds & catechisms 239 Apologetics & polemics 240 Christian moral & devotional theology 241 Moral theology 242 Devotional literature 243 Evangelistic writings for individuals 244 Not assigned or no longer used 245 Texts of hymns 246 Use of art in Christianity 247 Church furnishings & articles 248 Christian experience, practice, life 249 Christian observances in family life 250 Christian orders & local church 251 Preaching (Homiletics) 252 Texts of sermons 253 Pastoral office (Pastoral theology) 254 Parish government & administration 255 Religious congregations & orders 256 Not assigned or no longer used 257 Not assigned or no longer used 258 Not assigned or no longer used 259 Activities of the local church 260 Christian social theology 261 Social theology 262 Ecclesiology 263 Times, places of religious observance 264 Public worship 265 Sacraments, other rites & acts 266 Missions 267 Associations for religious work 268 Religious education 269 Spiritual renewal 270 Christian church history 271 Religious orders in church history 272 Persecutions in church history 273 Heresies in church history 274 Christian church in Europe 275 Christian church in Asia 276 Christian church in Africa 277 Christian church in North America 278 Christian church in South America 279 Christian church in other areas 280 Christian denominations & sects 281 Early church & Eastern churches 282 Roman Catholic Church 283 Anglican churches 284 Protestants of Continental origin 285 Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational 286 Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Adventist 287 Methodist & related churches 288 Not assigned or no longer used 289 Other denominations & sects 290 Other & comparative religions 291 Comparative religion 292 Classical (Greek & Roman) religion 293 Germanic religion 294 Religions of Indic origin 295 Zoroastrianism (Mazdaism, Parseeism) 296 Judaism 297 Islam & religions originating in it 298 Not assigned or no longer used 299 Other religions

Note 234 Salvation (Soteriology) & grace. This 234 call number can be further broken by Grace, Regeneration, Repentance, etc. All of this is “fuzzy” in that different understandings of theologians may look at the divisions differently and categorize them differently.

But each author and book had a number that was assigned after the general call number, so in a physical library you can go to the shelves 234 and see books on Soteriology or Salvation. With the introduction of computers, this physical way of finding books is no longer necessary. We have another construct to do the same but better.

WordPress.

My library is on the Internet at this present site. Note that because it is difficult to sort through different file formats (PDF, Microsoft Word, RTF, EPub, Kindle, etc) I am restricting this website to only have files in the theWord Free Bible Program format (https://www.theword.net).

But the files are offered to the world on a website running WordPress. WordPress has two constructs for presenting pages, posts and pages. A post is a time oriented information page, and a page is more of a reference information orientation. I use posts for Webmaster informative things. I use pages to host downloads of files in the theWord format.

Categories and Tags

The singular “place” where the file resides is in the website downloads folder on the server. Every single file on the website has a link to where it is. These are the categories pages, and basically, every work is written by somebody, (works written by people that I do not know who they are, or they want to be anonymous) are indicated by either “Anon,” “Anonymous,” or “Unknown.” Also there are works written by several authors, and these are typically the last two names of a two author work, and if more authors were part of it, then it is designated simply as “Multiple¨.

But every work is in a file, and every file has the following format (all lower case, and with hyphens instead of spaces),

Author Last Name – title – version number if any (v.1) – secondary extension (gbk, cmt, dct, etc.), and primary extension (twm, ont, nt, ot, etc). The ont, nt, and ot are for Bibles exclusively. All reference works end in twm.

Understanding our Filing System

Since this entire work is based on how I understand things and want them to be, this is how I think.

Every work has to be in a Category. These categories are a through z author lastnames, plus numbers. Note that as a rule I am removing any author first name or initials. It is just his last name, except where there may be confusion. Horatius Bonar had a brother Andrew Bonar, so I will add the first name or initial after the last name in that case.

The top box are categories where every single work on the website has to be in one of these pages. I have to divide the alphabet groups more than just the first letter of the last name because the WordPress software doesn’t work so well when you have 1000+ downloads on a single page. That is where I am heading eventually. So I break them up into groups like Aa-Al and Am-At, and Au-Az. (Austin-Sparks works have inflated the A category so that I basically need to separate his works out.) So if you want to find something on the website, knowing the author, you can find the file or if he is not up yet, or his work is not up yet by going to that category page.

For example, I want a work by Pink on the Attributes of God.

Pm-Pz is where you will find it.

This is very important because I am no longer making posts (which are searchable) but just pages with downloads for the files on them.

Searching Our Website

[ivory-search id=”6032″ title=”AJAX Search Form”]