40 years of library and information studies education in Wales

This issue of Education for Information is a ‘special’ one to celebrate 40 years of library and information science education in Aberystwyth, Wales. The setting up of the College of Librarianship Wales (CLW) in 1964 was, for many people, the realisation of a dream. The initial ideas of a “school for library training” can be traced back as far as 1917. However, it was the appearance of two reports in 1959 and 1962 (generally known as the Roberts report [1] and the Bourdillon report [2]) that provided the necessary impetus for the “establishment in Wales of a school of librarianship providing full-time courses” in order to meet the need for libraries in bilingual communities in Wales to have staff “acquainted with the Welsh language and well versed in the history and literature of Wales.” However, there were many problems to be overcome. Some people, including staff from the UK’s Library Association (LA) and the Association of British Library Schools, felt that there was no need for another educational establishment dealing with librarianship in the UK – by 1963 there were 11 schools of librarianship and information science (LIS), the one at University College London being the oldest having been established in 1919. Professional opinion in Wales was also against the setting up of the school. After consulting its members, the Welsh Branch of the LA concluded that there would be insufficient students to warrant a school in Wales and in March 1963 the Association of Assistant Librarians (AAL) for South Wales submitted a critical memorandum arguing that “The art and technique of librarianship is the same in any language – German, English or Welsh”. Also people felt that if there was to be a college to educate librarians in Wales it should be based in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, situated in the south east of the country close to the border with England, and not in the proposed location of Aberystwyth, a small town on the west coast of Wales. This argument was similar to that which had raged in the early 1900s on the question of the location of the National Library of Wales which finally resulted in its establishment in Aberystwyth. Indeed the AAL memorandum noted that “As for the ‘advantage of Aberystwyth, with its variety of libraries’, the claim was ‘surely exaggerated’, indeed ‘ludicrous”’. Finally, with much help from some visionary senior officers of Cardiganshire County Council (including the County Librarian) and with the support of the then