SharePoint 2007: Single Document library vs. Multiple Document Libraries

I often come across this question from customers or in forums about what is the best option to use a single document library vs. multiple document libraries in SharePoint site. However, choosing the best option is completely depends on the requirements to use single vs. multiple document libraries. There are different pros and cons associated using single vs. multiple document libraries.

What is a document library?

Document library is a location in a SharePoint site containing files of one or more content types. In SharePoint, by default everything is stored as content type. Example: By default, documents in a document library are stored with a “Document” content type. Document libraries are designed to manage and store related documents and lets users to create new documents of appropriate types.

Single Document Library :

·         Use a single document library if you have a requirement to store all of your documents in a central repository. So, you can view all the documents at one place, i.e. using group by views. Example: By Region, Country, or Year etc.

o   Permissions are not a constraint and would like to open the library for Read/Contribute permission users. i.e.  Users of the document library can see all the documents irrespective of read write permissions.

o   Require to group the documents based on specific category in a single view

Benefits for storing Documents in a Single Document Library:

·         Users can easily add new documents or find existing documents with a single document library

·         Document Management settings such as permissions, content versioning, and approval are applied at document library level

·         Multiple views can be created to view the documents in different groups and views created by using the user interface are bound to a particular library

·         Can attach Information Management policies, such as Retention, Auditing etc. to a document library level

Document Library Storage Limits:

·         The Maximum recommended size of a library is 10,000,000 documents (yes, 10 million documents).

·         Cannot apply unique document management settings such as require checkouts or versioning for specific documents.

·         Adding multiple content types to a single document library creates more confusion for the users if those content types have multiple metadata columns. To remediate this issue, use fewer content types in the document library

·         The performance of the views of content degrades when the number of items viewed exceeds 2,000 items. There are two recommendations from the Microsoft to remediate this issue.

o   Organize the content in the document library into folders each containing 2,000 of fewer.

o   Or, Create views that take advantage of indexed columns to return set of 2,000 or fewer in a view.

** I would recommend, creating views which returns 1,500 items instead of creating the folders yields the best performance. Folders cause lot of confusion, use metadata instead. **Folders are bad metadata is good!

Pros:

·         Can view different categories of documents in a single view.

·         Permissions can be managed centrally

·         Single point of truth

·         Less administrative over-head

Cons:

·         Cannot manage the permissions based on views, i.e. if user has read access to the document library, he/she can view all documents in the document library irrespective of filters, views unless you break inheritance for individual documents or use folders to restrict permissions. However, using folders or setting item level permissions is not a best practice since this complicates the permissions maintenance in long run.

·         Users may get over-whelmed with additional metadata fields need to be filled out

Multiple Document Libraries:

Use multiple document libraries if you have a requirement to restrict users from specific type of documents. Need to fill less metadata values by users. More are less like folders structure.

Pros:

·         Easy to setup the libraries

·         Less adjustment for user, as it is more like a folder structure

·         Unique permissions can set on individual document libraries

Cons:

·         More administrative over-ahead, as settings need to be configured on individual document libraries such as versioning, check-out, and information management policies etc.

·         Cannot view all documents in a single view or by grouping