Managing Objects

By "objects" we mean all things that can be stored in edu-sharing. Examples for objects are:

• files such as videos, PDFs or images,
• weblinks of interesting findings it the WWW, enriched with metadata,
• Moodle course archives or QTI-compliant ONYX tests,
• references to instances of connected tools such as etherpad,
• references to content of connected sources such as media distributions.

There are two different kinds of objects:

1. Objects that are stored as the file itself together with its metadata (e.g. your very own documents)
2. objects that actually reside outside of the repository (e.g. weblinks)

For objects that are actually stored outside of the repository edu-sharing uses so-called "shadow objects".
These objects are comparable to the index cards in a library catalog. Just like these index cards the objects shadow contain information about the actual object (Author, Title, Keywords ...).
Instead of the location on the shelf of the library they contain a reference to the location of the object on the web.

Objects stored in edu-sharing can be:

• opened,
• downloaded,
• commented,
• stored,
  
• organized in folders,
• edited,
• shared with other users,
• enriched with metadata,
• versioned,
• combined in series
• be used as the base of new variants
• moved and,
• deleted.