Generative universities and academic libraries: a common ground and shared vision

Abstract

This paper analyses Andrea Prencipe’s Università generativa as a theoretical framework for reinterpreting the role, functions, and future trajectories of academic libraries within contemporary higher education. Drawing on the model’s two core concepts, engagement and educability, and its three strategic dimensions (internationalisation, interdisciplinarity, and innovation), the paper highlights how these elements delineate a shared conceptual ground between Prencipe’s proposal and the ongoing transformation of academic library systems. Within this perspective academic libraries, traditionally understood as repositories or support services, are reframed as epistemic and social infrastructures: environments for knowledge co-production, lifelong and self-directed learning, and nodes connecting research, teaching, local communities, and scholarly communication networks. By examining established practices – such as open science, research data management (RDM), information literacy, support for the third mission and public engagement, inclusive services, and the development of hybrid physical-digital learning spaces – the paper shows how academic libraries inherently embody the principles of generativity, fostering critical thinking, information practices, and the capacity to navigate complexity. At the same time, the analysis reveals identifies a structural tension between potential generativity and its actual implementation, linked to professional and organisational constraints. In this context, academic libraries emerge as potentially strategic actors in the transformation of higher education, provided that their competencies are strengthened, interdisciplinary collaborations are enhanced, and their institutional role is formally recognized.