Creating a bookshelf with the Content Query Webpart in SharePoint

A lot of information these days comes in form of an eBook or similar format like a simple PDF. In SharePoint the easiest way to present this information to the user is as a list. For the more ambitious there is the metadata navigation, which brings a lot of beauty for handling list content. I will use a more sophisticated approach via the Content Query Webpart (CQWP) to present the information like books on the bookshelf.

Preparation

Before we can start, we’ll need to step back for a moment and think about the data structure we’ll need in order to support the view we are creating here. There are a few questions you must ask yourself:

• Where and in which document library will you store you eBooks?
• Will you mix different content types in that document library or will you create a new library for every document type?

In my case, I have more documents other than just eBooks. I’ve decided to keep all documents in a single document library and to identify the documents by their content type. Therefore, one of the first steps will be to create the library, the columns and the content type.

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