  Modern astronomical surveys such as the Large Synoptic Sky Survey (LSST)
promise an unprecedented wealth of discoveries, delivered in the form of ~10
million alerts of time-variable events per night. Astronomers are faced with
the daunting challenge of identifying the most scientifically important events
from this flood of data in order to conduct effective and timely follow-up
observations.
  Several ongoing observing programs have proven databases to be extremely
valuable in conducting efficient follow-up, particularly when combined with
tools to select targets, submit observation requests directly to ground- and
space-based facilities (manual, remotely-operated and robotic), handle the
resulting data, interface with analysis software and share information with
collaborators. We draw on experience from a number of follow-up programs
running at LCOGT, all of which have independently developed systems to provide
these capabilities, including the Microlensing Key Project (RoboNet, PI:
Tsapras, Co-I: Street), the Global Supernovae Project (SNEx, PI: Howell), and
the Near-Earth Object Project (NEOExchange, PI: Lister). We refer to these
systems in general as Target and Observation Managers, or TOMs.
  Future projects, facing a much greater and rapidly-growing list of potential
targets, will find such tools to be indispensable, but the systems developed to
date are highly specialized to the projects they serve and are not designed to
scale to the LSST alert rate.
  We present a project to develop a general-purpose software toolkit that will
enable astronomers to easily build TOM systems that they can customize to suit
their needs, while a professionally-developed codebase will ensure that the
systems are capable of scaling to future programs.
