Tomcat classloader problem

[Mark F]

Tomcat 4.1.27 on Solaris 8

I have two jar files I'd like to make available to all my web applications
so I placed them in $TOMCAT_HOME/shared/lib however they are not being
found. I also tried common/lib but it didn't work either. The error I'm
getting is java.lang.IllegalStateException:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:

The only way I can get them recognized buy Tomcat is to put them in the
WEB-INF/lib folder for each web app. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-Mark