Beginning SharePoint® 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint

Chapter 3. Working with Libraries

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• The key activities related to a document library such as the creation, uploading, and updating of files

• The core functionality available related to tracking unique versions of files

• Features available within the various library templates in SharePoint 2010

In this chapter, you discover the magic behind document collaboration: the document library. Document libraries allow you to create, store, manage, and collaborate on documents. SharePoint has a variety of library templates, each designed to allow maximum efficiency when you work with particular types of documents. This chapter discusses the major elements of a document library and steps you through some of the different library templates and how you can use them to manage the documents crucial to business operations.

In Chapter 4, you will learn how to configure the properties and features of a document library to fit your business needs. This chapter focuses on interacting with document libraries that have been previously created or configured.

UNDERSTANDING LIBRARIES AND DOCUMENTS

If you want to, you can think of a document library as a Windows file folder but better. Like folders, libraries act as document storage, but they also store the document's metadata or version history (more about these a little later), which folders do not. Also, Windows file folders lend themselves to user personalization in that they may stay on a user's drive or be labeled differently ...