South African higher education library mergers: what did they achieve?

The years 2004-2008 saw government-imposed mergers of some of the South African higher education institutions with the aim to transform the sector. The government’s transformation agenda reflected in the National Plan for Higher Education included restructuring the institutional landscape, merging some of the institutions to among others; reduce duplication and overlap in programmes and service provision, increase students’ access to institutions, help build academic and administrative capacity, refocus and reshape the culture of the institutions into one of South Africa. Libraries also had to merge as components of these institutions. In October 2009, Tshwane University of Technology hosted a conference on ‘The impact of mergers on the South African Higher education system’. The conference afforded affected parties an opportunity to share experiences and learn from one another. The general feelings and observations expressed at the conference were that mergers had failed. Libraries are academic support entities which provide services to their parent institutions. This paper will assess perceptions of universities of technology libraries which came into existence as a result of mergers with particular focus on achievements of the mergers w.r.t. human, financial and physical resources.