Why are these folders' share names appended with dollar signs?

I've recently come into a web development position with a company who just lost their server/network admin. Though I was hired for web development, I'm being asked to do some routine maintenance tasks on the server that I'm nonetheless having trouble with, having no background in this sort of stuff. It doesn't help that we've lost all communication with the old network admin.

Here's the situation. A few dozen faculty members in this section of the university have shared directories on the server (Windows Server 2003, SP 2) such as \\servername\Jones$, \\servername\Smith$, and \\servername\Watson$. My question is this: Why are the share names appended with dollar signs? It doesn't appear to be a technical requirement, nor does it distinguish those folders from other similarly-named folders. Is this standard style, a requirement of some sort that I've failed to understand, or something that I should write off as the product of the last admin's eccentricity?

Apologies for the kinda lame question, but I haven't been able to figure this out, and I've been continuing to add new directories with dollar-sign-appended share names because I'm unsure about whether or not it's actually necessary.

The $ in SMB/CIFS URIs means that the share is hidden, and won't be displayed when browsing shared folders. This usually, but not necessarily, implies that it requires administrator privileges to access it.

This convention also applies to shared printers, as well.

Adding a dollar sign ($) to the end of the Share Name will hide the resource from the Network Neighborhood directory. This is referred to as a hidden share.

Appending the dollar sign makes the share hidden, so it won't show up if you browse to the computer in Windows Explorer or use net view on the command line.

If you want to share to show up in those cases, don't put the $ on it.

They are "admin shares" and are usually hidden if you are browsing \computer using windows Explorer or most other browsing tools.

The $ at the end of the share name hides the share from people browsing.

For instance, if you have a share "\computer1\share1$", anyone who browses to "\computer1" will not see share1 listed.

However, if you create the share "\computer1\share2", they will be able to see share2.

That's the only difference I know of.

It's a hidden share. Not only does it not show up, but it's also not searchable.

I know for a fact that in order to access non-shared directories of the target machine, you need to do something like \machinename\c$ where c$ represents the C:\ drive. I am not sure if that is the case in this case.