Reusing existing software components is usually cheaper than writing new code, but developers can only reuse what they can find and trust. It is often finding a suitable component that is the real difficulty, not reuse itself. This paper describes a method for documenting and classifying reusable software components so that they are easier to search, compare and reuse. In this method, each component is first described using a short three-part form (metadata, functionality, interface) and this information is then used directly to classify the component along five fields: operating system, programming language, platform, role and purpose, which let a developer filter a repository down to the components that actually fit their needs. Then, this method is illustrated with a case study which involves choosing a component for a hospital patient-record system. In this illustration, three candidate components matched the basic requirements, and the documented functionality information was enough to identify the one component with the needed medical-history feature without downloading or testing any of them first. We also surveyed a wider group of Libyan developers who watched a recorded demonstration of the tool. Most of them reported a positive perception of its effectiveness and ease of use. Future work should test this method with more developers on more tasks and compare it against existing ways of searching for components...................... Keywords: ..................software reuse, component documentation, component classification, software repository, case study.