As the scholarly record has grown, so have bibliographic control instruments, some of which are in machine readable form. The expense of setting up an organization for access to the machine readable data bases seems beyond the budgets of most institutions. The objective is to establish a dependable service organization to make machine readable data bases available to researchers. MERIT has promulgated the objective to make machine readable data bases accessible to its members. The sharing of competences and facilities will make it possible to establish a service to MERIT institutions collectively that cannot be established separately. This expansion of the MERIT network will make demands on resources and facilities of its members, but in the long run the institutional objectives will be better served. This program will further develop expertise in the planning and development of network goals and not merely represent the interest of the separate member institutions. (Author/SJ)