Campus, collections, and the student: a spatial ontology of the university library

Abstract

This article develops a framework for understanding the evolving spatial ontology of the contemporary university library. We conceptualise the library in three overlapping ways. First, as a material anchor of campus life and a metonym for the university’s identity; second, as a site where the fixity of collections intersects with the mobility of students, knowledge, and digital infrastructures; and third, as a spatial manifestation of how universities now reimagine the learner as flexible, networked, and socially embedded. Drawing on interviews with library professionals and spatial ethnography at twelve universities in Australia and internationally, we demonstrate how libraries have shifted from repositories of physical collections to hybrid environments that blend scholarly tradition with new forms of conviviality, collaboration, wellbeing, and digital support. Through these lenses, the article argues that the university library is not a peripheral or residual space but an essential – yet often overlooked and under-theorised – site where the competing imperatives of scholarly tradition, market responsiveness, and managerial control are actively negotiated across both physical and digital terrain. We show how the library’s spatial reorganisation mirrors and amplifies sector-wide shifts: from teaching- to learning-centred models, from fixed collections to platform-mediated flows, and from solitary scholarship to collaborative, multi-modal learning environments. By tracing these transformations, the article positions the library as both a metonym for the university itself and as a spatial nexus where tradition, innovation, and the changing logics of higher education intersect.