Convergence of academic support services

The first converged services in the UK, bringing together library and computing centre under a single manager are already over a decade old. Indeed, as early as 1988, the British Journal of Academic Librarianship devoted a whole issue to the topic, seeing a trend which 'is gathering momentum' (BJAL, 1988, p. 121). Since then the progress of convergence has appeared inexorable, although occasional distinguished voices have spoken out against it, arguing that 'at the very least the priorities and management needs in two such diverse bodies are incompatible' (Ratcliffe and Hartley, 1993). Yet even in 1993 this comment from the then Librarian and Computing Centre Director at the University of Cambridge appeared to say more about the distinctiveness of Cambridge than the merit of the argument. Since then, very few higher education (HE) institutions have consciously rejected the opportunity for convergence when it occurred and none has yet chosen to revert to the previous structure when offered the opportunity, although one or two may be considering it. Sidgreaves (1995) has perceptively pointed out that convergence is a logical consequence of libraries and computer centres moving towards the same point and that senior institutional managers can see this quite as clearly as those directly involved. Like many others he also stresses that there is no single optimal model. The fullest description of the background to convergence has come from the Impact on People of Electronic ¬Libraries (IMPEL) project conducted by Day. The project has undertaken case studies in six institutions, but has also looked critically at the growing literature on the topic. A follow up project, IMPEL2 has carried out further studies in 1996 and 1997 (Edwards 1997) in twenty-eight institutions and has again conducted an extensive literature review on monitoring organizational and cultural change.