Contracting to provide library service for a distance graduate education program

In these times of no‐growth budgets and escalating service demands, the formation of partnerships between all types of higher education institutions — both public and private — is now a recognized survival strategy. Details the budget development in a partnership created through an agreement between a private distance‐education institution, Walden University, and a public research institution library, Indiana University Libraries. For the distance‐education university, the agreement's main advantage is a uniform program of access and delivery of research resources to its students during summer sessions held on the Indiana University Bloomington campus. For the research university library, the agreement offers the opportunity to develop an in‐house pilot program, with external funding, for offering distance education library support to its own students. Based on their experience of mutual benefit over the past three years, Walden University and Indiana University Libraries' administrators have transformed the goal of their inter‐institutional agreement from protection to proaction.