# The Library Window

The Library window is your center for managing re-usable content in Toon Boom Studio. From the Library window, you can access:

- All vector elements and drawings, and image elements and bitmaps in your animation.

From the list of vector elements, you can copy any drawing from one place in your animation set to another.

- Templates stored in the Global or Local libraries, or in another library on your file system .

Templates are files that you can use to store individual pieces of animation content, such as drawings, images, or sounds, or collections of animation content (many drawings, images or sounds) or elements.

When you need to re-use any piece of animation content in your current animation, or in any project you are working on, you can use templates.

You can even use templates to share work with other artists on a project. Create templates from completed work and then send the template files to the rest of the people on your team. Those responsible for compositing can import the templates into the Library and then build the finished work.

Templates can reduce the amount of work you need to do, as well as keep the file size of your animation small.

When you are animating cut-out characters, you may decide to create libraries of templates of your character. You may decide to create templates of individual body parts, the entire character in various poses, or animated sequences like walk-cycles.

You can create templates from:

- Drawings, images and sound.
- Entire elements. Templates you create from the Timeline store the layout order and peg effects you design.

You can also import media files (sound files and SWF movies) into the Library so that you can manage them as re-usable templates.

| You cannot create templates from Media elements or their contents.

See Also
Creating and Renaming Libraries
Previewing Content in the Library
Editing Templates
Importing Multimedia Files into the Library
Copying a Template into Your Animation
Linking Templates to Media Elements
Re-using Drawings and Images from the Current Animation