This is the way my old firm had it set up and it worked really well.

The base for every project is based on a company library, and each project could create families and expand what they had on a project specific basis. After a while we would discuss wheather or not any of the familes created in the projects were nessisary in the company library...if they were we would incorperate them, if not we would scrap them. We kept strict control of who was could change things in the office library but everyone was able to dump families into a file requesting them to be moved into the company directory.

I would recommend building as much ahead of time and then contiune to grow it as you go, while keeping consistant with the way families are built. The more you have in there the less those have to do when it comes time for the project.

So to summarize at least in my oppinion....
"Are the office library families full of predefined types, or left empty?" I would put as much in there as you can and build as you go
"Do we save types created in projects back to the office library family?" Determine if the families are really something that are used often, if they are look at creating them for the office library
"Do we keep project-specific family libraries?" Keep a project-specific library just of things that are unique to a project
"Does every family go in the office library?" Only ones that would cam be seen as usefull to other projects down the road
"Do we pre-populate type parameters in the library, or leave them blank?" I would recommend pre-populating as well

Exactly what gd said. Our Project Content folders are just one offs or minor modifications that have to happen for the specific job. They are also directories where we save model Groups out, of things. During project closeout i tear through the job directory and see what is in there worth harvesting for the library. They have to get cleaned up to meet office standards, etc, but i do that.

The library itself is locked down so no one can save stuff to it, so we can be sure things have been reviewed and checked before they end up in there.

Thanks guys, much as I expected.

One further query - how do you manage your library for multiple locations?

At present we sync. our satelite office with our main each night - as direct access would take to long. Again, I'm simply curious if there's a "better" way.

Ours sync overnight automatically, amongst 4 locations. Several synch programs run in real time, but i dont see the ROI on it. Generally they can wait til the end of the day to get something i change, if not... They CAN access our location (corporate) directly, any time they want to...