Undergraduate library and information science education at Aberystwyth

This study considers the development of undergraduate library and information science education at Aberystwyth over a thirty-year period, in the context of the pattern of educational change in the UK over the same period. The first joint honours course was a collaboration between the College of Librarianship Wales and the neighbouring University College of Wales. This was a successful course for two decades, but a number of problems became apparent towards the end of the 1980s when numbers of applying began to decline. Many of these issues were addressed following a merger of the institutions in August 1989 and the establishment of a full-time single honours course, which has helped to stabilise full-time undergraduate numbers. Other initiatives to establish full-time Information Science and Information Management programmes have not so far succeeded. However, the new department's main success has been with the introduction of an undergraduate single honours course by distance learning in 1993. This development of this course is described.