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Scott Snider is <<...trying to organize a large amount of my
company's internal documentation. This documentation
(made up primarily of microsoft applications) is currently
stored in a single directory on a lan drive... I'm looking for a
way for any member of our company to easily hunt down any
specific file within that one directory.>>
I'm sure that someone can provide you with specific, custom-
built tools to handle this, but I'm from the "roll your own
solution" school of management. Something very much like a
hierarchical "table of contents" (for relatively small
collections of data) or "back of the book" index (for larger,
more complex hierarchies) would seem to be an ideal
solution, and you could create and maintain the index in a
variety of ways.
For the table of contents, you could create an HTML page
that includes pointers to each file on the LAN (if everyone's
equipped with a Web browser). This kind of structure is easy
to proofread and maintain, since if the files are organized
logically on the network, the hierarchy probably matches the
hierarchy on the network and you can do a one-to-one match.
Our current intranet is designed this way. Second, you could
build an actual index document, with synonyms and cross-
references, but instead of including page numbers, include
the document name. That also facilitates maintenance, since if
you move or delete a file, you search for all instances of the
name in your index and make the appropriate corrections. In
both cases, it should be relatively simple to get the browser or
document to launch that file with a single mouse-click; if not,
it's still easy for users to find the appropriate file, albeit less
convenient.
"Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all those sevens,
something just calling out for us to discover it. But I
suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence." George
Miller, "The Magical Number Seven" (1956)
