MINISIS Management for Libraries (M2L) by Mary Dzurinko The Company MINISIS is an information management system product of the MINISIS Systems Group sponsored by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). IDRC is a public corporation created in 1970 by the Parliament of Canada. The system was developed to assist developing countries with the management of local and global information. Software is available for library, museum, records, project, inventory, banking policy, archives, and administrative records management. MINISIS products are in use in 60 countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Canada. The library management system is currently installed in over 500 national, corporate, university, and small and medium sized special libraries around the world. MINISIS is installed in several museums and corporate libraries in the U.S.; however, the company began to target the small and medium sized special libraries U.S. market in the late 1990s. MINISIS Library System MINISIS is a bi-lingual (English and French) relational integrated library system offering acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, serials, and WEB OPAC modules. It also offers the ability to mange and retrieve data in the language of the user, i.e., Arabic and English. MINISIS Management for Libraries (M2L) is designed for installation and use "right out of the box," with little or no customization necessary, although the company provides customization consulting services. MINISIS does appear very flexible. A library can design worksheets, query forms, and reports for each module’s functions that define local needs. MINISIS modules include acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, serials, and Web OPAC. The basic system "MINISIS Toolkit" includes:
Features
Cost As a non-profit corporation, MINISIS provides their software on a cost recovery basis. Price is country-based on information from the UN Human Index and The World Bank reports. Additionally, there are separate prices for for-profit organizations and non-profit educational end users. Quoted price (2/99) for a 5 concurrent license of the MINISIS-RDBMS, Web interface for 150 endusers, annual maintenance fee and the SMA toolkit to build and customize databases is For-profit: 22,100 CAD / 20,900 USD Non-Profit, Educational 11,000 CAD / 10,500 USD Advantages: MINISIS is a highly developed, flexible database management system, offering an excellent search engine and a multi-lingual thesaurus. The latter feature is especially attractive for organizations that have international office sites. The Web interface allows a library to take advantage of current browser technology, presenting their Internet users with a familiar OPAC screen. The system appears easy to install and many libraries will be able to handle local customization of the OPAC screen and module worksheets. A nice feature of the worksheet screens is the row of function buttons at the bottom of each screen – they are clear and easy to use. MINISIS costs are very reasonable; you get a lot of sophisticated software for your buck. Disadvantages: One drawback of the system is the lack of the ability to search all fields. Additionally, nothing is "right out of the box." Most libraries will undoubtedly need some customization support. The standard worksheet screens contain many boxes and make the screen appear very crowded. MINISIS indicates that as of 3/31/99 they had installed of a new version of M2L in three sites. This number does not provide interested clients with many installed sites to review. The MINISIS Web site offers a version of the software for download. MINISIS
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