HIT: Sec: How many search stations?

[Roger Frick <rfrick@OMNIFEST.UWM.EDU>]

Thanks for the well thought-out responses concerning  the number of
search stations needed in a library.  Obviously, the decision needs to
be made on a case-by-case basis.

Any further insights, please forward 'em to me at rogerfrick@juno.com.

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We have almost 1100 students.  English and Math classrooms have 5
computers, 4 in most of the other rooms.  In the LMC there are 4 on the
floor, mainly for OPAC and 16 in an ajoining lab.  All of the stations
have access to our OPAC and the Web.  SIRS and Newsbank we do on the web.
Remember that when a class comes to the LMC, very few of the students
will have searched the OPAC ahead of time, even it they were sitting
right next to the computer in their classroom.  At least mine don't think
to do it yet, but our network has only really be complete for about 2
months.

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In our media center we have 40 computers attached to our LAN and district
WAN (and Internet) plus an adjacent lab with 25 computers on the network.
Each of our classrooms has one computer with 8 "lighthouse" classrooms
with 6 computers each. We do not have enough stations in the media center
for student use. Get as many as you can!

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I am interested in hearing the responses you receive for your request.  I
have a "committee" of non-library users who feel that this high school
library should have 120 computers with internet/word processing/CD
ROM/OPAC access on all.  In a school of 2400 students (with no LAN at
present time), I still feel this is overkill.  I'd like to hear from
others.  Thanks.

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I really like the lighthouse idea.  My district is moving away from a
computer lab set-up.  At our model tech school we are providing one work
station per classroom (primarily for the teacher).  Then we have rolling
banks of four networked computers that can be moved from room to room as
the need arises.  The computer labs are slowly being consumed (is that
the right word?) by the library media center, and new units are being
assigned to the LMC rather than a lab.  BTW, I am talking about elementary
schools.

My suggestion is that the high school library have one computer for every
two students in a standarad-sized class.  So if your classes run about 30
students average, you would have 15 student stations in the
library--minimum.  With this number, you can handle two to three
different groups researching at the same time--one or two groups would be
using print at the tables, or video, etc.

In the elementary school, my experience is that you need one student
station for every three students.  Our largest classes have 32 students,
so I have requested 10 student workstations per elementary school library.

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