Problems finding template

Hello -

     I am writing a web app that starts a thread to perform some 
operations that take too much time to require the user to wait for them.

     In that thread, I am trying to use Velocity to write out some data 
into a template. I start a VelocityEngine, init it, create a Velocity 
Context
and then call mergeTemplate.  The problem is that I am at a loss about 
how to specify the location of the template. I have it in a directory
called 'templates' in the root directory of my web app, but neither 
'/templates/<template>' or 'templates/<template> works. Investigating
a little, I find that the current working directory is in tomcat's bin 
directory.

     Is there somewhere to specify where Velocity Engine should look for 
templates?

-- 
Garey Mills
Library Systems Office
UC Berkeley