CMS Made Simple Forums

We're an article repository site  with some content hosted on external sites, we want to be able include an entry for such content (ie Title, Author, section/category, External site name, external site link) so that users can search for such content in the same way as they would search for content hosted in our CMS. And also for such content to be displayed in our category listing pages.

What's important is to be able to link to such content directly from the category listing pages and to have an entry next to the link that it's external content.

There are many modules to choose from and not all modules need to be used just for what the name says, company directory for one, products is another...

Choice depends on particular situation, and the way you want your repository to be expanded. I would choose module "Products", because it is suitable for large number of records and date can be imported from CSV file.