Museum of the University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews has a problem. In the Bell Pettigrew Museum, it boasts what is arguably one of the UK's outstanding natural history displays - but the public can only get to see it for a couple of hours on Tuesdays and Fridays between June and September.

You can gain access at other times only by appointment, as you can to the bulk of the university's other holdings, including its designated collections.

In a world in which there's an increasing recognition that university collections are as public as other collections, this lack of easy access must be a bit embarrassing, particularly given that St Andrews hosts a highly respected museum studies programme.

Enter the Museum of the University of St Andrews (Musa), which opened last year in a delightfully converted 19th-century coachhouse with extensive sea views. Its ambitious claim is that it offers visitors: "Six hundred years of heritage; one place to see it all," and that "all" in only four modestly sized galleries, one of which poses the pertinent question: "What is a museum?"

Whatever a museum is, I came away feeling pretty certain that what I'd been looking at probably wasn't one. So what is Musa, apart from a nice conversion with excellent views from the terrace?

Reading matter

Well, for much of the time it's effectively a book on walls: I don't think I've ever encountered so much text in such a small space. To be fair, Musa has set itself the difficult challenge of telling the story of a historically rich university and of offering a "taster" of its collections of more than 100,000 objects. But by the time I'd reached Gallery 4, probably the most successful of the spaces, I'd pretty well lost the will to read another word.

We're introduced, in Gallery 1, to the early history of religious life in St Andrews and to the establishment of the university in the early 15th century. Although there are some wonderfully resonant objects, the story is essentially told on the text panels.

The objects appear to have been selected very much as illustrations to that story and here, as in so many of the other displays, it's the historic manuscript collection that provides the star attractions.

The dominant installation in Gallery 2, Living and Learning, is the central case devoted to the display of the Silver Arrow Competition (archery) medals, which offer a wonderful essay in silver engraving from the late renaissance to the rococo via the baroque.

Together with other examples of university plate and regalia, these suggest the richness of the university's holdings of silverware. But, as in the previous gallery, the work is done overwhelmingly by text, with objects evidently selected primarily for their capacity to illustrate the wall-hung "book".

Living introduces topics such as transport; the cost of accommodation; student numbers; meals and clothing; overseas and female students; and leisure time, while Learning covers areas such as the cost of learning; teaching in the arts, sciences and theology; the library; graduation and other ceremonies; distinguished alumni; and the traditions of a university that dates from the 15th century.

It's all fascinating stuff, but to be honest I'd much rather they'd printed it out in traditional book form and used the space to bring out more of the collections. A Memory Bank invites visitors to listen to and record memories of St Andrews and of university life, which presupposes repeat visits - but by whom?

Scientific riches

Gallery 3, Seeing and Believing, is wonderfully object-rich, particularly with items from the library's special collections. The star here is surely Humphrey Cole's great astrolabe of 1575, which provides a great centrepiece to a fascinating display of scientific instruments and other riches from the otherwise inaccessible collections.

The gallery's interactives are engaging and I had lots of fun building my own kaleidoscope, which isn't as easy as it sounds, especially after all the solid reading of the previous hour or so. It also wasn't always easy to match objects with text, of which in this gallery, as elsewhere, there was still a great deal.

The final Musa gallery ought really to be the first on the suggested itinerary. There's a well-illustrated introduction to the university's other publicly accessible collections, and a modern cabinet of curiosities that nicely juxtaposes items from the university's founding 18th-century cabinet with more recent acquisitions. Glazed pits in the floor relate to the study of geology, archaeology and marine biology and there are also interactive "feely boxes".

You can rise to the Archaeology Challenge and reconstruct a broken pot, and you can pull out drawers to reveal yet more of the university's hidden treasures. And, of course, you can read.

Very nice, but…

On the upper floor are what appeared to be generous spaces for engagement with school and other groups and although they were not in evidence on the day that I was there, I suspect that it's in meetings with education and curatorial staff that most visitors are likely to get the best from Musa.

Otherwise, whatever the visitor's age, the core assumption that this small building is a place of education, both prior and delivered, is all-pervasive and, for many visitors to St Andrews, surely intimidating. I kept asking myself who this museum was designed for.

Is it a selling point for potential students and their parents? If so, a nicely produced prospectus could do the job almost as well. Is it for tourists, registered students, the local community? It's certainly not for faculty and teaching.

In spite of a wind-blown ten minutes on the terrace clearing my head, I still couldn't decide - and I suspect that the university couldn't, either. What it ends up feeling like, despite wonderful objects and nice displays, is a cross between a visitor centre and an apology for all the wonderful things which, for no doubt perfectly good reasons, the University of St Andrews cannot allow you to see.

Nichola Johnson is the director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich