ABSTRACT
The institutions fell into two fairly distinct types: general colleges largely from the college of education tradition with a mixed background of public sector and Church funding; and specialist colleges of art, music and drama. The emphasis of each was more on teaching and learning, although there were certainly pockets of important research. The constitution of these merged services varied, but usually included media services and reprographics alongside library services, and sometimes areas as diverse as educational development, careers, archives, galleries, museums and television production. Although IT services occasionally featured, this wave of convergence pre-dated the common 1990s convergence between library and IT services. The situation at University College Chichester may be illustrative of the development in several colleges. In 1990 the Learning Resources Unit of the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education operated a small suite of RM Nimbus computers at each of its two campuses with dial-up access to Joint Academic Network, managed by the Media Services team.
