Pgapro,
The reason you could not access the files is because Marc now requires a $25 per year contribution to download files except in the "forums help" area and for private messaging and similar perks. He said, basically, that too many people were stopping by the Cove only to download goodies and leave but not contribute positively to helping the Cove (answering others' questions, participating in discussions, posting goodies, etc.), and because his bandwidth expenses were going up all the time. Read the notice at the top that starts "For access to attachments..."
One company's AVL will likely be much different than another's. Some, like us, simply have a list of vendor names on a paper that says "approved vendors" with the approval date and a comments section. Some companies may want much more detail like vendor address, phone, e-mail, contact person, method of approval used, who authorized the approval and when, next eval. date, vendor ID number, vendor rating and ranking, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Do what works best for your company if you want an AVL -- what has been working in the past to pick vendors? This is one of the easier things to do -- just speak with the folks involved, keep it as simple as possible, and make sure it actually helps you somewhere.
He'd have to show me the "shall" that I was violating. It is not his job to select the type and extent of control nor the number of vendors you should have. 
