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Establishing and organising university museums at higher-education institutions demonstrates an increased interest in the history of the given institution, its bonds with the region, yet first and foremost it points to the need to preserve traces of academic heritage constituting an important component of national heritage. To-date, university museums in Poland have been dedicated neither an unequivocal definition, nor specific legal regulations. These organizations are characterized by differentiated management modes, formulation of goals, as well as varied policies of amassing collections. An attempt at defining university museums and their legal status, as well as their positioning in tertiary-education institutions’ structure has been made. Moreover, the nuances resulting from the failure to have included university museums in the Act on Museums of 21 November 1996 have been clarified. Additionally, a list of university museums for 2020, put together as a result of the research conducted by the paper’s Authors and based on the documents available in the archive of the Association of University Museums (SMU), has been presented.

Resorting to the example of the Jagiellonian University (UJ), the Author discusses the topic of the bodies that are guardians of academic heritage within the structure of public tertiary education. In the first part of the paper the distinction between a museum and a collection is introduced, and the brief profiles of selected units of the Jagiellonian University are provided. In the next section definite examples are given of conducting scientific processes in museums and collections. In the context of the new Law on Higher Education and Science amendments that appear in reference to university museums and collections are discussed. The collections of museum units curating the academic heritage stem from the fundamental activity of the Jagiellonian University consisting in education and conducting research. These units operate within the University structure, this confirmed in the Charter which the Constitution for Science has made the major document regulating the university internal system. The Charter of the Jagiellonian University as a university running 13 museum units has been analysed. The search for the concepts related to identity, academic heritage, and museums in the content of the Charter, resulted in the identification of a new category: units running ancillary activity of museum-like character.