Marta Szaszkiewicz

The paper attempts to contribute to the debate on the possibility of using tangible and intangible traces of scientific and cultural activity of universities in the implementation of sustainable development tasks, especially of utilising the cultural capital of museums and academic collections for building an engaged academic community. These objectives become both a need and an obligation, next to sustainability and accountability in the field of research, heritage protection, and popularisation. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the principles of sustainable development in the area of culture can be linked to the cultural heritage of universities, and how to inscribe the implementation of these principles in the university’s activity.

The aim of this article is to introduce the activities of museums and collections located in the structure of Polish higher education institutions. The analysis is based on concrete examples of academic units operating today. The authors distinguish several categories of museums according to their location, among them university and departmental museums. The second criterion is the organisational formula, in which the authors indicate, apart from museums, also centres and history interpretation units. Using archaeological, medical and natural history collections as examples, they describe similarities and differences in the way they work with resources. The article is also an attempt to start a discourse aimed at drawing attention to the potential lying in such units, the mission and duty of which is to preserve, secure, develop and make available for scientific and didactic purposes the heritage of the university and the history of science. The authors also refer to the legal situation of the university museum units and regulations, which the organisers may use when creating and conducting activities related to the collection and processing of tangible and intangible academic heritage, which is part of the world’s scientific heritage.