Library versus Folder

I’m new (like yesterday) to EagleFiler so I have been learning through trial and error (yes, I did read the manual and the stickies). My question centers around organization. Is it better to have more libraries and fewer folders or the other way around?

I work for multiple companies (4 or 5) and do independent projects (6 or 7) for each of them. For each project, I want to preserve Documents (multiple versions), Graphics (multiple versions), Email (with attachments) and Notes. EagleFiler looks like the perfect product to use for this kind of capture.

I only run one project at a time (my choice) and while the project is active the artifacts accumulate rapidly in a 3-4 week period. No change to anything after the project is over - so it’s all historical.

I have been using a combination of multiple email clients and folder structures for these activities but archiving specific project-related email folders along with documents isn’t working out very efficiently.

Would one library for each company with folders for each project be better than one library for each project? There will never be more than four sub folders for each project (Documents, Graphics, Email and Notes).

I don’t think there’s necessarily a right answer, but some questions to consider:

  1. Would it be helpful to view other projects from the same company while working on a new project?
  2. Would you want to search across all the projects for a given company?
  3. If you plan to use tags, would they tend to be the same for a given company (and not be project-specific)?

If the answers to these questions are No, then I think per-project libraries would probably make sense.

  1. Would it be helpful to view other projects from the same company while working on a new project?
  2. Would you want to search across all the projects for a given company?
  3. If you plan to use tags, would they tend to be the same for a given company (and not be project-specific)?
  1. Yes. Helpful to see the other projects from the same company and “borrow” artifacts (mostly graphics) from those projects.
  2. Yes. I definitely want to be able to search across other projects within a company but not across companies.
  3. I plan to use tags but for content and/or status (org chart, final) and those would be company and project-specific.

Of course, I’m learning here so I know that this will evolve as I get deeper into EagleFiler. My main objective is get the email and the documents together in one place (out of the mail clients and out of the MacBook’s document hierarchy), like an archive that isn’t taking up space on the hard drive but can be stored on a network drive and searched when I need it.

It sounds like per-company is the way to go. You can always split or join libraries later if you want.

Thank you very much. I’ll go that way (and learn a lot I’m sure).