Structuring your resource library
A library members actually use is organised around their problems. How categories, collections and tags each earn their place.
Guidance from Portava Academy for the team running a membership organisation.
In short
- Structure the library around members' problems rather than your org chart.
- Categories are shelves for browsing, collections are paths for a purpose, and tags are for search. Three jobs, three tools.
- Answer the ten questions members already ask before writing anything speculative.
- A smaller, current library beats a large stale one. Prune and refresh on a schedule.
Most resource libraries are organised the way the organisation is organised. A folder per department, growing over time, navigable only by the people who built them.
Members do not arrive with your org chart. They arrive with a problem, such as taking on a first employee, chasing a grant, or an energy bill that doubled. A library earns use by being structured around those problems.
Three tools, three jobs
The portal gives you three organising tools. Each does a different job, and each does the others' jobs badly.
Categories are shelves. They are the browse view for a member with a topic in mind but no specific document. Keep them few and problem-shaped, such as employment, funding, starting up and growth.
Six or eight good shelves beat fifteen precise ones, because every extra category taxes every browsing decision. If a category holds two items, it is clutter with a heading.
Collections are paths. A collection is a curated, ordered route through resources that serve one purpose, drawn from any shelf. "Start here" for new members, or "Employment essentials" for the first-time employer. The order is the advice.
A collection is also the one structure you can put in front of someone. A welcome email that links a collection gives a new member a path rather than a building.
Tags are for search. Use the words members would actually type, in their vocabulary rather than yours. Tags cost little, so be generous. Categories cost attention, so be stingy.
Fill it from the questions you already have
The first ten resources should not be brainstormed. They are sitting in your inbox and your phone log. Take the questions members already ask and answer each one properly, in public.
This is also what feeds the assistant. Every question it answers well from a published resource is a phone call your team did not take twice. After the first ten, the assistant's own log of unanswered questions becomes your standing commissioning list.
Match the format to the job. A checklist a member can download beats an essay about diligence. A recorded webinar carries a discussion no article can. A well-chosen link to an authoritative source beats a paraphrase you now have to maintain.
Curate like a librarian
A library's credibility is set by its worst item. One resource citing a scheme that closed two years ago quietly undermines trust in every shelf around it.
So prune. Archive what no longer earns its place. Set review dates on anything with an expiry, such as rates, schemes and legislation. Feature the few items that deserve the front of the library this season, and rotate them as seasons change.
The test of the structure is whether a member you never meet can go from "I have a problem" to "I have the answer" without asking anyone. When the answer is usually yes, the library has become the first place members check.