Twelve colleges incorporated under the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), began a library cooperative program to establish a Periodical Bank. The prime purpose of the Bank is to provide college students and faculty access to a larger number of periodicals than could be provided by their individual libraries. Under the proposed plan, each ACM library was to sell paper backfiles up to a total of $50,000 which would be assigned to the Service Library and Periodical Bank, $440,000 of the total $500,000 would be used to purchase commercially available periodical backfiles in microforms. The libraries, on the average, have doubled their periodical holdings through the Bank, at a fraction of the cost each would usually incur for such acquisitions. (MF)