South-Western Polytechnic Chelsea Polytechnic Chelsea College of Science and Technology Chelsea College

Library provision at the South-Western Polytechnic was restricted to the availability of reading room space. Students were expected to use the adjacent Chelsea Public Library in order to consult books and periodicals. The inconvenience of this arrangement led to the creation of a Library Committee in 1921. The consequent library remained comparatively small until the post-World War Two expansion in provision that witnessed an increase in the number of titles from around 8000 in 1960 to 80,000 in 1970. These were divided between the Main Library, branch libraries situated on the principal College sites, and departmental collections of reference volumes. All of these were combined with the King's Library when the Colleges merged in 1985.