Diference Between A List and Library
Although in most of the UI and API they can be manipulated the same way, there are some significant differences between Lists and Libraries. The latter is a specialized type of the former. Lists: Can have attachments Have major versions only Do not have Check-in/Check-out features Libraries: Cannot have attachments (files are directly in the library) Have both minor (draft) and major (published) versioning Have Check-in/Check-Out Publishing Libraries can use Page Layouts Have Unique Document Ids out of the box In code, you can always obtain an SPList from a SPDocumentLibrary but not the other way around.