[2] In 1957 the Minister of Education appointed a Committee chaired by Sir Sydney Castle Roberts to review the Structure of the Public Library Service in England and Wales.

'[3] These recommendations were repeated in 1962 in the Bourdillon Report on Standards of public library service in England[4] Despite opposition from the UK Library Association, and some members of the profession in Wales,[5] but with the support of members of Cardiganshire County Council including Alun R. Edwards, the County Librarian, other Welsh-speaking librarians, and Philip Sewell (a former Head of the School of Librarianship at the Polytechnic of North London), who was then the Senior Library Adviser in the UK government's Department of Education and Science, the Welsh Joint Education Committee decided to proceed with the new college in 1963.

Alun Edwards gave a detailed account of the campaign to establish the college in his Welsh-language autobiography, 'Yr Hedyn Mwstard' (The Mustard Seed).

[7] The Principal of the new college was appointed in February 1964 followed by three teaching staff who prepared for the first intake of twelve postgraduate students in the following September.

The demand for qualified librarians was growing rapidly and, to be a success, the new college would need to attract students from throughout the British Isles and also overseas.

He set out his vision for the future in a paper presented to the General Council of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in 1969.

[9] A further fifty students, taking courses leading to the UK Library Association's professional qualification, enrolled in January 1965, together with one more member of staff.

In due course, the University of Wales approved the college for the registration of candidates for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).

It maintained a staff of Liaison and Training Officers who visited libraries in the UK and overseas to gather information on recent developments to inform teaching, identified suitable and willing hosts for students' fieldwork, arranged periods of fieldwork, managed support for the continuing education programmes, and organised study tours both in the UK and abroad.

[19] Links with Africa included the Seriatim scheme (eight members of staff to the universities of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello in Nigeria); short courses on school librarianship in Zambia and Sierra Leone;[20] consultancies in planning national library and documentation schemes in Libya and the Sudan; and the setting up of a library assistants' training programme in Kenya for Unesco.

[24] In addition, the excellent facilities on campus welcomed the delegates attending the conferences of many national and international professional bodies.

During the early 1980s British government higher education policy moved away from supporting small single-subject mono-technic colleges encouraging those with graduate courses to merge with neighbouring institutions to form new universities.

[27] 'The merger was not achieved without some soul searching: the college would lose its independence; but it was already becoming obvious that, in the competitive world of higher education, its days as a monotechnic were numbered.