Forum Discussion
Macromedia Authorware had what were called "libraries," which were external repositories where a developer could store images, sounds, videos, and code snippets. This allowed the developer to both externalize these objects (making it possible to update all references within a course to a given object with a single click, as well as reduce a course's file size significantly because the objects in the course were pointers to the actual object within the library) and to share those objects between multiple courses and developers.
When packaged externally, a developer could update a library, which would update the objects the course referenced from the library. An example would be a company logo which gets updated, and is on every page as a "weather bug" in the lower-right corner. You update the image in the library, and the next time a learner launches the course, the updated logo appears. Note, the original published course file did not need to be opened and re-published.