Index Theologicus


The Index Theologicus is an international scientific open access bibliography for theology and religious studies.
It covers scientifically relevant information from the Middle Ages to the present day. Publishers are the University Library of Tübingen, the Faculty of Protestant Theology and the Faculty of Roman-Catholic Theology, University of Tübingen.

History

Its predecessor, the Zeitschrifteninhaltsdienst Theologie or ZID, was started in 1975. This was a current content service which reprinted the table of contents of the main theology journals; monthly ZID issues included an index of authors, Biblical references and persons, which were later combined in an annual and a five-year index.
In 1994-1995, the ZID was converted into a database using allegro-C ; the bibliographic data extracted from the journals was now stored electronically before it was published in the ZID issues, and the data which had been published in the prior ZID issues was retrospectively catalogued. In addition to subject indexing with standardized index terms, a faceted classification with 130 classes was introduced at that time.
The database itself was made available to the public in German first on floppy disks, later on CD-ROM. Starting in 2001, the subject headings and the user interface were also translated into English.
At the end of 2000, the ZID ceased the publication of its print version. The name of the database was changed to Index Theologicus in 2002, when the publishing house Mohr Siebeck started managing its distribution. Since 2007, the database is only available online and free of charge.

Features

As of March 2019, IxTheo comprised about 2 million records on theological literature, and about 15,000 records are added each year.. Subject headings and search capabilities are provided in 9 languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Russian and Chinese. A special search capability for specific Bible passages using standard abbreviations is also available.
The faceted classification now comprises 139 classes divided into 13 main groups.
Since 2013, IxTheo uses the database of the regional cataloguing network "Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund", which is shared i.a. by the theological faculties of Tübingen, Heidelberg and Freiburg. The data from the former allegro-c database was migrated into the SWB catalog in 2016.
IxTheo is implemented as a faceted Discovery System built on the VuFind library search engine. A growing number of journals are processed using semi-automated production procedures with software such as Imageware and Zotero.

Services

In addition to the standard search capabilities for theological literature, IxTheo offers the following services:
IxTheo has partnerships with a number of libraries, bibliographic tools and publishing houses: