Sites vs Subsites vs Document Libraries vs Folders

#firstpost #SPOnewbie

Hello

I am learning SP, almost from scratch, at an alarming rate, but there is one area of Information architecture which I cannot get my head around, and I’m hoping to fine some guidance from some lovely people…

I work for a group of secondary schools in the UK – each have their own way of doing things, but they also each have shared documents on a file server which I want them to move to SharePoint.

I want each school to have their own space to properly upload and organise their teaching resources in such a way that:

• The school who ‘owns’ the resource are the only school who can edit in situ
• Other schools can easily search for and view resources which other schools have created.

From here, I am unsure how to best create the layout. From what I can tell, my options are as follows:

1. Each school has its own site collection, and each department within the school has its own site
2. There is one overall site collection, each school has its own subsite, and each of those are split into departmental subsites
3. Same as 2, but each department has their own document library, not a subsite
4. Same as 2, but departments are split into folders

There may be an entirely different taxonomy approach which I have yet to consider, but my brain is pickled – if anyone can throw any wisdom my way, I would be very grateful.

Thank you for reading this far. I hope someone is able to help me make more sense of this.