TheWord Bible Study Program

Stacks and Shelves Concepts

In a library, you need order. Once you get over about 2 dozen books, you need to have "a place for every book, and every book in its place", as somebody in my quickly fading past memories once said. So with the growing number of resources for theWord, we need to have some handles by which we slice and dice our information. I am organizing this library basically like a real world physical paper and ink book library. The difference is that while a physical library needs two books to place a book in two places, we can link and make copies. So basically we will have two subdivisions in our library.

"A stack" - A stack in a rack or set of shelves in a physical library. Normally all the books taken together are referred to as "the stacks". Therefore all our books are kept in the stacks. My basic order will be alphabetically by author's last name. From there I will organize my own files for your downloading.

"A shelf" - A shelf is a subdivision of a stack. A single stack may have 5-8 shelves, and the shelves in a physical library are flexible, that is they move as one section grows and another section stays small. You don't need to understand this much, except that the whole library is made up of stacks of books, and each stack can have subdivisions we will call a shelf.

The advantage of having all this electronically is that we can "slice and dice" our resources according to however we want, duplicating as much as we want without really causing us problems as far as actually buying 2 copies of a single book. So I am making several different "Stack" concepts. Just remember that a single book will appear in various different stacks as well as I can classify them. For example, a theology book by Arthur Pink The Attributes of God, will be in the P Stacks, for Pink. In Pink's case I have sufficient books by him that he will not be listed on the main P Authors page, but he will have his own page. I will break off authors that I have a number of books for into their own page, because it is easier to scan the main "P Authors" page if you don't have a screen and a half of Pink's works.

Pink's The Attributes of God will also be listed on the "Theology Stacks" page, as well in the "Theology Proper" Page. So a single book will appear in more than one place. Basically, every book needs to appear in the author stacks, and the rest of the places where it appears is optional.

Why bother with "stacks" and "shelves"? - One of the advantages of the TW program is that it allows you to make and use what it calls layouts (I am using the terminology "stack" for my website, and a "shelf" for me is a folder in the layout for TW). A layout is a subgroup of your modules (any type, book, dictionary, commentary, etc. can be included except Bibles which are dealt with separately). The reason why I am belaboring the concept of stacks and shelves is that what is on my website (these divisions) can be reproduced in TW and makes the program all the more powerful.

For example, let's say we are studying the doctrine of God, specifically the attributes of God. Won't it be really nice to have the ability to search across all of your books? TW let's you do that. But what is even more powerful is the ability to select a "stack" called THEOLOGY PROPER, and then to search that for "Omnipotence". Once you load that THEOLOGY PROPER layout, you might see a folder called "Attributes" in which you can click on that, and see all your books that deal specifically with the attributes of God.

Using THEWORD and this type of system, this makes finding something very quick, and it places a great number of specific resources at your finger tips without being too cumbersome. A pastor (if he has access to a large religious library at some nearby university) may take several hours trying to look up the topic "Attributes of God" and then going into the physical stacks in 3-4 dozen places using the Dewey Decimal system to see if the book is there or checked out, and then to browse what is currently not checked out. It is a long process for a person who's time is at a premium. Our system allows the pastor to have in two clicks everything visible, and there (there is no "checked out" try back later).

Part of setting up your system to do this is to make the layouts in TW such that you can search on subsets of books. My grouping into stacks will greatly help you to organize and upload these books for refined searching.

Author Stacks - These stacks will be organized by author's last name, with a few special extra pages. I will make one special page for "Anonymous Works" stacks, "Multiple Author" stacks and another for "Creeds and confessions" which basically is a multi-author type of work. As I mentioned above, I will make special single author stack pages for those authors that I have a number of works. There is no real preference or importance to the author if he has his own page except that it is cumbersome to keep somebody like Austin-Sparks with his 70 works on the A authors page.

Special Theme Stacks - These stacks are special themes which are of interest to some people but not all. This helps them not have to hunt and pick throughout the whole library for books they want and need. Here I am starting off with Greek, Hebrew, Church History, Devotional Works (like daily devotions), Sect-False Religions (Apologetics), the parables, Prayer, and sermons. These stacks will group these books for easier access to these works.

Theology Stacks - The theology stacks are special stacks in which I will try to group books under special theological groups, or subgroups.

Please check the sidebar on my site for new Stacks as I get them done.

visits since July 14, 2009