First mergers: a case study of the Boland College of Education and the Cape Technikon libraries

Predating the major higher education mergers, the Cape Technikon Library Service was faced with the incorporation of the Mowbray College of Education and Boland College of Education libraries in 2000. The actual stock of these two libraries was larger than that of the Technikon, and in addition, an institution that had a monolithic library structure was suddenly faced with coping with a more dispersed structure. Both Mowbray and Boland (which was at Wellington, some 65 km away) were functioning libraries and the challenges were therefore to maintain functionality while changing and to keep the best from each library while creating a single library service. This article discusses the lessons learned from both the perspective of the Boland College of Education and the Cape Technikon libraries, in handling both the human component of the merger, as well as the unique challenges of the collections and of service alignment. These lessons would prove to be useful in guiding and understanding the complexities of the later merger of the Cape Technikon and Peninsula Technikon into the Cape Peninsula University of Technology