All Windows users are familiar with the special folders My Documents and My Music as they were introduced many iterations ago. At the time, the idea was that all your documents or pictures would be contained in these folders and therefor everything was neatly organized and could be recalled at a later date. That’s obviously a perfect scenario but reality, as is generally the case, was quite different. For example, your music files are often located in multiple locations on your harddrive, or as the case more often lately, your network. Thankfully, Microsoft realized this and expanded on the My concept in Windows 7 with the feature titled Libraries.

Libraries are simply virtual folders that contain links to other folders, either on the computer or across the local network. This is a greatly simplified version of the dream of Microsoft had for it’s next generation file system that was originally slated for Vista only to be scraped and still yet to see the true light of day. Libraries are just portals to all the files they contain – not unlike how iTunes is a portal to your music yet at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter to many where that music ultimately lives on the computer.

Libraries are only as useful as the locations they contain so therefor, to make the most of them you need to let Windows know where all your content types live. If you had network attache storage, or NAS, it is logical to add that location to the respective library – here’s how.

Right-click on the Library in question and choose Properties.

On the resulting dialog browse to a new folder by clicking Include a folder.

Now with you click on the Library you should see the new location added to the list.