Since 2004 Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia has provided a face-to-face tertiary learning experience for students scattered all over a very large state through the Curtin Centre for Regional Education. The challenge for the Curtin University Library Service was to provide a model of high quality Library support for these students who often had little or no experience of study (or Libraries) at a tertiary level.

We have an excellent Off campus Library Service delivered from our Perth metropolitan campus and, of course, a wealth of online digital resources. The normal approach might have been to rely on these to deliver the necessary library services to these students. However, the model we use is more diverse, challenging, and, I believe, more rewarding for the students. We hoped to move from what has often been thought of as a deficit model to a very positive model of Library support. To do this, a series of collaborative partnerships have been established with TAFE, Public and academic Libraries right across the state to provide those students with a face-to-face Library experience and access to physical collections where they are studying.

This paper will look at how we make these arrangements work. It will explore the challenges and benefits and look at future flexible models of Library support that will blur the distinctions between the off Campus, regional and on campus experience of students.