Theologika.net is an online resource offered at no charge to our users. Our goal is to support the catechetical and evangelization mission of the Church by providing a database of trustworthy, relevant, authoritative information for use in ministry or personal spiritual growth. Our dream is that in even the smallest, most isolated village in the world, if there is a computer that can reach the Internet, the collected thinking of the Christian church through the centuries, that has been indexed and organized through the Theologika database, will be available to the man, woman or child who wants to learn more about God and grow in faith. And in our own, highly developed, capitalistic countries of the world, the same resources will be available to those who seek the same knowledge and growth - regardless of ability to go out and buy a book or attend a class.

Just now, Theologika.net is in its infancy. It’s less than a year old, but already hundreds of items have been tagged, and we have users all around the world. The number of entries and Trustees entering materials is growing at a steady pace. Within a year, Theologika will have become a substantial resource for our Christian community. We’re even hoping to be able to move into languages beyond English soon.

So, how to fund the effort?

Theologika.net is not a charity. We can’t offer tax-deductiblity in return for charitable donations. We encourage you to donate to your parish, to the missions, to schools. However, we can’t ask for your donations.

What we can offer are sponsorship listings on our webpages, with our thanks. If you have a business, we’re happy to link to your website. Take the cost out of your advertising budget and it still may be deductible! (Check with your accountant, of course.)

If you’d like to help support the development of this resource for ministry, please contact us. We’ll be happy to talk with you about how you can help. We have a variety of options available and will be delighted to work with you to find the best fit. Just as the mighty redwood tree has its start from tiny seeds in tiny cones and/or can grow from the base of parent trees, so together we can grow a great resource for the Church from a tiny start.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Have you ever wanted to know more about something, anything, and gone to the Internet to try to find out about it? If you have, once you enter what you want to know in the search bar, you’ll discover that what you get is page after page of entries, many of them including only one or two of the words you’ve entered into the search bar. To further complicate matters, the results you’ll get will vary depending on which search bar you use. Yahoo, Google, and MyWebSearch, among others, all present different results.

Our goal at Theologika.net is to make these kinds of frustrating searches a thing of the past. The heart of our site is our discovery engine at http://www.theologika.net/search. While the number of items included is far fewer than those on the wider Internet, the materials included are all from trusted, authoritative sources. As a result, they are more likely to be useful.

Search Tips

There are a variety of ways of finding information at Theologika.net using our vertical discovery engine.

The best way is to click on “Drive our vertical discovery engine,” found in the middle column of the home page. It takes you directly to the discovery engine, with all of its items included. Towards the top of the page, there’s a Search bar. Enter a word or phrase in the bar and if we have anything on the topic in our database, the entries will show up in the middle column of the page. This page also has a list of Topics on the left. The list of topics will change, depending on what you requested in the search. Clicking on a topic in the left column will further limit your search, so that increasingly more relevant information is displayed.

The discovery engine is also linked to a section you’ll see about halfway down the left column of the home page, labeled “Search categories.” These are the most frequently entered “tags.” (A tag is a word or phrase used to label a topic or website so it can be found more easily again. There’s a great explanation of tags and tagging at: http://www.theologika.net/home/faq) Click on any of those topics and you’ll be taken to that section of the discovery engine. Your results will be those related to the topic you chose.

For example, if I enter the word “faith” into the search bar of the discovery engine, I may get 120 items that have been tagged with the term faith. If I then choose the term “spirituality” from the left hand bar, the number of items is reduced to 39 (as of today). I then coose “Franciscan” and two items remain.

Now, obviously, this is far from the ideal number of items you might want to have available for your research or a class you’re preparing on Franciscan faith and spirituality! So what use is Theologika?

Theologika doesn’t limit you to our database for information.  We offer a section of recommendations from Trusted Authorities and a blog, to provide more sources of information. But the best thing about Theologika.net is that you can Open your own directory, set up your browser for tagging to your Theologika directory, and go out into the big world of the Internet. As you find more useful information, tag it. It will appear in your directory whenever you log into Theologika, from any computer in the world. If it’s something you think we should have in the larger public directory, contact us. We’ll take a look at it and tag it for others to use or we may decide that you would be a great Trustee and incorporate all of your materials (with your permission, of course).

Theologika will become a great resource as we all, working together, use and build it. In less than one year, with only a few people tagging, we already have hundreds of items identified. Some may be duplicates, but that’s OK. The tags will be different, so there are more ways to find the same great information.

You ask, “What if I don’t have hours of time to spend tagging information?” Actually, tagging takes very little time. If you ever “bookmark” items or save them into a “favorites” list on your computer, you’ve already begun tagging. But those tags are generally limited to the computer you’re using at the time. And they can be lost if your computer crashes. Items you tag for your Theologika directory are saved outside your computer. So you can always get to them, even on borrowed computers in internet cafés halfway around the world.

Tagging Tips

The instructions for getting the tagging links onto your browser are found at http://www.theologika.net/home/faq).

Once you have your own directory and the tagging links readily available, you can start tagging for your own use. With the first item of the day, you’ll have to log in to your directory. A window will open and you can log in right there. When your username and password are recognized, the window for tagging will follow.

You’ll see four boxes into which you can enter information. The top one is for tags - words and phrases that will remind you what you found worthwhile about the item and want to remember. The second one is for the name of the item or website. It will generally be filled in already, but you can modify the entry, call it something else if that makes more sense. The third box will also be filled - with the URL or web address where you found the item. Don’t change that or you won’t get back to your item! The fourth box is for you to enter notes about the item. Often I just “cut and paste” from the website itself. (Actually, in many cases if you highlight a description from the website first, before clicking on the tagging icon or instruction, the highlighted information will be automatically entered as well.)

The final step is the most important. Click on “Save” below the 4 boxes. If you don’t save it, it won’t be there when you return. Once your tagged item is saved, the window closes.

When you’re tagging, there should be at least two windows open. If you click on the icon to tag a website and the tagging window opens in place of the website, back out of it (use the arrow at the top of the screen pointing left) and turn off your “pop-up blocker.” Then when you tell the tagger to operate, you’ll get both windows open and can successfully add the new material to your directory. (If the window doesn’t show up above your screen, check at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes it shows up there!)

Most importantly, if you have any problems with setting up or using your directory or with tagging, drop me a line at kathypozos@theologika.net. I may not have all the answers, but I’ll do my best to help you or find out how to resolve the problem you’re having.

And if you’ve got a website yourself, please put our site, www.theologika.net, into your links and recommendations.  We’ve even got a neat logo you can put with it if you’d like. You can copy it from the blog at http://blog.theologika.net/2008/06/20/your-own-directory-at-theologikanet/.

One of the questions I often hear from people is, “How would I use Theologika in my own work?” The idea of a database of trusted, relevant, authoritative materials is easily grasped. But how it can be useful to take time to open a personal directory and tag items from the database or from the Internet is not. So I decided to dedicate a post to explaining how Theologika can be used in everyday life by teachers, preachers, catechists, discussion group leaders and others who have an interest in sharing the gifts they have received with others.

Theologika’s discovery engine/database is actually composed of a series of directories of items identified as valuable by Trustees, persons whose education or experience make them uniquely qualified to select resources from the vast amount of information in our world today. Trustees agree to allow their directories to be viewed by the public. This is done through a feature called a Watchlist. Directories of Trustees are included in the Watchlist of an editor of Theologika and through the Watchlist become incorporated into the larger database of the discovery engine.

The first step in using Theologika for personal growth or professional activities is to open a free, password protected personal Directory. The process for opening a directory has been explained in an earlier post.

Once you have your own directory, you can begin to use the site more profitably. You can tag materials that you have found valuable on the Internet and be able to retrieve them from any computer with Internet access. Tagging is basically bookmarking or marking as a favorite something that you have found. The difference is that when tagging in Theologika, you get to add words or phrases to help you find and identify what it was that made the item of value for you. So if you don’t remember what something was called, you can still find it again. Also, the artificial intelligence within the site will help you find related items as part of your search, items identified by site Trustees. Once you have a directory you can begin to put the directories of other users into a Watchlist, so you can find their recommendations more easily. Here’s how you do it.

Log in to your directory in Theologika.net. On the upper right hand side of the discovery engine page, you’ll find the log in link. (Sorry, you have to specifically click on the “log in” button to make it work!) A new page will open showing two tabs to the right above the bar. The tabs read “My Watchlist” and “My Directory.” You’ll be in your own directory when you first log in.

Click on My Watchlist and another page opens. In the left hand column, you’ll find options including “Browse by User”, “Watchlist Settings” and “Topics.” Down the middle column, you’ll find the tagged items of all the people included in your watchlist. To see them by specific username, you select the specific username from the list on the left under Browse by User.

To add a person to your userlist, select “Watchlist Settings.” In the middle column, there’s a box in which you can enter a user name. That’s where you enter the name of the person whose directory you want to include in your watchlist. If you later want to remove that person’s directory from your watchlist, you can do that in the section just below the add a user box. Below the list of directories on your watchlist, you’ll find a list of other users who have your directory on their watchlist. (This feature is particularly useful for teachers or group leaders.)

 A Watchlist is simply a list of personal directories that an individual can select. By selecting another person’s directory, the items tagged (identified as worthwhile) by that other person can be viewed easily, all listed without other tagged items appearing. So if, for example, you wanted to see what items your friend “Joe Christian” has tagged, you would put his username into your watchlist. Then you could check out his recommendations whenever you wished, without having to go through all the pages of materials in the discovery engine.

Please note: Valid usernames cannot have spaces or non-alphanumeric characters/symbols in them. If the user is named Joe Christian, his username could be JoeChristian. Ask your friend for his or her username if you want to put the friend’s directory on your watchlist.

So, how is this useful to me as a teacher, preacher, catechist, group leader, etc.?

Well, suppose I’m a teacher. I have a class coming up this Fall and I want to share a list of recommended readings with my students. I’ve taught this class in the past, and every year I end up having a few different things to add to the list. Once in a while I drop something out, so it doesn’t get to be an overwhelmingly large list. But most of the items remain the same.

I have a variety of options: 1) I can type out the list each time I teach the class. 2) I can revise the computer file in which I have listed the items and reprint it each time. 3) I can open a free password protected directory at Theologika and tag the items off the Internet (or from items already included in Theologika). As long as it has a URL, an item can be tagged. I would tag the item with MyName>ClassName>SectionNumber and any other identifying information about the item I choose to include. (Specific information about tagging is found at http://www.theologika.net/home/faq.) Then, on the first day of class, I can tell my students to go to www.theologika.net, open the discovery engine and put the tag I’ve used into the Search bar. The items I want them to read will appear on the page there for them. If next year I don’t want to include a particular item, I simply edit the tags, taking out the class specific information, and it won’t show up next time the tag for the class is entered.

Now, if I have a variety of classes, or if I give talks in a variety of settings, and people are always asking me what I recommend as reading materials, then I send them to Theologika and invite them to open a directory and put my Directory into their own Watch List. Whenever I add items to my Directory, they’ll be able to find my newest recommendations through their Watch List. (If I haven’t the time to do it myself, I can ask a trusted student or assistant to tag my recommendations for me. Check with Theologika’s editors for help in doing this.)

With Theologika, I can even arrange to offer a class online. This is particularly valuable if I have a popular talk or topic and cannot possibly get to all of the people/groups asking me to come talk to them. I can offer little bites of what I have and keep them coming for more until I can get to their location personally. Or maybe, I’ll just keep meeting them online, especially those in small, out-of-the-way locations who wouldn’t ordinarily be people I could reach. After all, the goal is to spread the Good News, isn’t it? And the Lord will provide for my daily needs while I reach out across the Web.

These are only a few of the many ways people can use Theologika in their own personal or professional growth and outreach or ministry. Please be creative. It takes a little time at first, because you have to start your directory from scratch. But if you add an item or two at a time, it doesn’t take long to have a nice collection of materials ready for easy reference. And who knows, you might find something through the discovery engine that you hadn’t seen earlier! If we all join together in building this, we’ll have something really worthwhile to share.

Please contact me if you have any questions or if you have trouble getting it to work. If you’d like to be considered as a Trustee, drop me an email. KathyPozos@theologika.net

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Did you know you can have your own personalized Theologika.net directory to store and record your online resources for theology and religious studies? How about sharing your recommendations with friends, colleagues, and students? Would you like to see what others are putting in their own directories?

You can do all these things by opening your own password protected directory at www.Theologika.net. It’s easy and it’s free.

All you have to do is to go to http://www.Theologika.net/search and click on the “Register” button in the upper right hand corner.

Fill out the simple form for your user name and password. (Your user name will be your directory name.) User names must not have any spaces in them. Also, most symbols don’t work in user names.

In a minute or so after you submit your registration, check your email for your registration link. Be sure to check your junk mail filter if you don’t find the message and link from Theologika in your in box.

Click on the link and you are ready to start tagging (adding items to your directory).

To share information with friends or colleagues, use the “Watchlist” feature.

Log into the site. There’ll be a heading, “My Watchlist Settings” in the left column. Click there and a screen will open that allows you to add the username of the other person to your watchlist. You will then be able to see all the items in that person’s directory. Have the other person do the same and you can share information.

Tagging basics:

To make it easy to tag items online for your directory, add your directory site to your list of favorites. If you’re using Firefox as your browser you can add simple shortcuts to your tool bar - the FAQs at the bottom of the search page explain how to do it. With Internet Explorer or Safari, follow the instructions in the FAQs to add a link to your Favorites list for your directory and for tagging (adding entries to your directory).

When you begin tagging, be sure the pop-up blocker on your browser is turned off. Another window will open so that you can “cut and paste” information from the site you want to tag into your directory listings. In order to tag an item, it must have a unique URL. Your personal directory listings will not appear within the main Theologika.net database unless you have been designated as a Trustee. (Trustees are persons with special education or experience that qualify them as experts in their particular field. If you believe you would qualify as a Trustee, please contact us.) 

Check the FAQs for more great information about how to tag items for your directory. Take a look at our blog post on searching and tagging for more help if you need it.

Exploring the rest of the site:

Theologika.net also includes a section of recommendations from trusted authorities. You can visit it from the home page of the website.

Whenever you want to get back to the main page of the website, just click on the word cloud at the top of the page. It’ll take you right back.

If you have any problems using our search/discovery engine, getting your directory established, or using the tagging function, drop us an email and we’ll contact you to help resolve them.

If you find something on the web that’s really great, and we don’t have it yet in Theologika.net, please drop us a note as well. We’ll take a look at it and see if it fits.

If you’d like information about something that we don’t have yet in the search/discovery engine, let us know. We’ll look for it or find someone who knows about the topic to get the information into the database.

We hope Theologika.net will be helpful in your work and spiritual journey. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Randy and Kathy