Three contiguous schools in the upper midwest--a teacher's training college and a private four-year college in one state, and a land-grant university in another--were studied to see if their libraries could merge one of their major divisions--technical services--into a single administrative unit. Potential benefits from such a merger were felt to be economic, political, social, and educational. The investigator found that these schools were not yet ready for such a merger. Several alternative courses of action were suggested which would allow the schools to begin preparing for such a move as painlessly as possible. Supporting the study is a methodology for analyzing library cooperative proposals including a questionnaire, interview techniques, a statistical analysis of acquisition (on-order) files to determine potential overlap, a processing diary study, flow process charts, a staff dispersion study, cost analysis, and a policies and procedures analysis chart. (Author/PF)