What the Asset Library is
The Asset Library is one central home for all your business's media — images and files — kept separate from any single entry. Entries point at an asset rather than storing their own copy, so one image can be reused across many records, organized in folders, and replaced everywhere at once.
Requirements: viewing media that is already in use needs access to the collection; uploading and organizing assets needs a role that can manage the library.
The Asset Library is where a business's media lives — its images and files — in one place, apart from any single record. Instead of every entry carrying its own buried copy of a photo, the media sits in the library, and entries point at it. That one design choice is what the rest of this page is about, because it changes how media behaves across your whole business.
A library, not an attachment
When you put an image on an entry, you are not pasting a file into that record — you are pointing the record's image field at an asset in the library, much as a reference points one entry at another. The asset is the thing; the entry holds a link to it. Uploaded media lands in the library, organized in folders so it stays findable as it grows, rather than scattered one file at a time inside individual records.
Why the library matters
Two consequences follow, and both are the point of having a library at all. The first is reuse: because an entry only links to an asset, the same image can sit on many entries at once — one product photo across every listing that shares it, one logo across everything that carries it — without duplicating the file each time. The second is replace once, update everywhere: swap the asset in the library and every entry that points at it shows the new version, with nothing to redo record by record. Media stops being dozens of stale copies and becomes one source you maintain in a single place.
Versions and variants
An asset is not a single frozen file. The library keeps versions, so you can update the media it holds and, when you want, publish a particular version as the live one — history is kept rather than overwritten. It also produces variants: renditions of the same asset suited to where it appears, so a large upload can serve a small thumbnail and a full-size image from the one original. The exact formats, limits, and transformations are their own reference; here it is enough to know an asset carries history and adapts to context.
Getting media in
Media reaches the library two ways: you upload files directly, or you bring images in by their web address — the second is how an agent or a bulk import populates a catalog without a person dragging files one by one. Either way the result is the same: an asset in the library that any entry can then point at.