Designing curricula around the standards, with clearly delineated strategies, expectations, and evaluative procedures, is thought to assure that growth in student achievement may be tracked. While this process can sometimes be nebulous, one thing is certain: clearly understanding what is involved in reaching a degree of excellence and determining when and if growth in student performance has been achieved is fundamental. The library media center community is not exempt from this process, nor should it be. An effective library media center program will reflect standards of educational excellence based on benchmarks of quality. While national standards are extremely important and useful, state and local standards fit the needs of a particular state or district. Despite--or perhaps because of--the fact that shrinking state dollars precipitated a dramatic decline in funding for library media center materials and a spate of staffing reductions, library media specialists in California recently developed a comprehensive set of standards and guidelines for improving library media centers across the state. "Standards and Guidelines for Strong School Libraries" (CSLA, 2004) has not been officially recognized by the state legislature or the state department of education, but it still has a positive impact on library media center programs across the state. In this article, the author describes how this publication has provided both direction and renewed hope to managing library media centers in California at a time when the state library media centers have been disproportionately affected by the state budget crisis.