The “Idea of the University”: Positioning Academic Librarians in the Future University

ABSTRACT

The idea of the university has undergone a conceptual evolution that has lasted nearly one thousand years. In inspecting this historical discourse more closely, it becomes clear that it is a conversation led by academics and that some voices in our university communities are in fact absent from the dialogue. This raises a number of interesting conceptual and practical questions because as the university continues to evolve and the responsibilities of staff shift, the idea of the university is also increasingly important for professional staff in universities to engage with. This theoretical article makes the case that there are compelling contemporary reasons for academic librarians to engage critically with the ‘idea of the university’. In doing so, it highlights how professional academic library practice is intertwined with complex scholarly arguments around the idea of the university and its institutional realities.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical university studies
• idea of the university
• higher education
• professional staff
• academic librarians

Notes

¹ Professional staff in universities or “higher education professionals” are personnel who “do not fit the binary status system of academic and administrative” staff (Schneijderberg, 2017, p. 1).

² For the purposes of this article, academic librarians are professionals who work in the libraries that are part of the institution and organization of a university. That is, the library of an “institution of higher education,” “whose primary function is to serve students, academic and professional staff in universities” (International Organization for Standardization, 2014, definition 3.33).