MINSTREL — management information made simple?

MINSTREL stands for ‘Management Information Software Tool — Research in Libraries’. The aim of the Project is to develop software which will enable librarians at all levels of management to obtain relevant and reliable management information from automated and non‐automated data sources. The Project is developing an environment which will provide managers with a range of functions and tools to access and manipulate information. The software is being designed to be independent of any particular library system or decision support system, and no special technical knowledge will be required to access it. This article gives some background to the Project and then goes on to discuss the proposed architecture for the system, which it is hoped may provide a better framework for management information provision than has been available to date.