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Media Facilities

Specifics such as shelving, technology and other physical features of the library media center as a facility in a Georgia public school are left to the local system’s discretion. The only state requirement is in the area of square footage. This requirement may be found at the Georgia Department of Education Web site at www.doe.k12.ga.us. Do a keyword search on Facilities Services. Select Facilities Services: Rules and Guidelines. Scroll down the page to Square Footage Requirements and open the pdf file. The media center requirements are on page 5 of that document.

Several helpful resources to consult when decisions are being made in renovating a library media center or constructing a new one are available in the literature. Linworth Publishing’s Professional Growth Series includes book by Steven M. Baule entitled Facilities Planning for School Library Media and Technology Centers (1999).

Doug Johnson offers some design pitfalls to avoid in his article "Building Digital Libraries for Analog People: Ten Common Design Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them" in the May/June 2000 issue of Knowledge Quest, The Journal of the American Association of School Librarians. This article should appear in the Back Issues file at the AASL Web site at http://www.ala.org/aasl/kqweb.