SharePoint Libraries

A SharePoint Library is a collection of documents as well as information describing those documents, such as the document's author, the name of the document, where the document is located on the network, and so on. SharePoint Libraries are very convenient in situations in which you want to keep a central repository of documents.

Users of your SharePoint Services Web site can upload documents to the SharePoint Library. Depending on their level of access, users can connect to the site and edit the document or make other changes to the document library. You can also give users access to create their own SharePoint Libraries so that your documents can be organized according to the criteria you define.

As seen in Figure 34.4, Windows SharePoint Services provides users the ability to see a version history of documents in a library, discuss a document using a SharePoint Discussions feature that allows users to add non-destructive notes to documents, and set up alerts that will email them when a document is changed.

Figure 34.4. Users have many options when it comes to SharePoint Document Libraries.

FrontPage 2003 can connect to a SharePoint Library and can display information about documents in it, such as the user who created the document, when it was last modified, when it was created, how large it is, and so on. You can configure any one of these fields to display in numerous ways, including displaying the field as a link directly into the SharePoint site so that the item can be edited in ready-made SharePoint forms.

In situations in which you would like to incorporate data from a SharePoint Library into a Web page containing no other SharePoint information, FrontPage 2003 provides you with all the tools necessary and also gives you the ability to connect that page directly to the editing facilities provided by SharePoint for even greater power.