Derbyshire and ORDA

A case study of an institutional repository success.

Derbyshire

Derby Teaching Hospitals have an Online Research @ Derby Archive (ORDA). Working in partnership with Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

ORDA is the official institutional research repository for the NHS in Derbyshire. It captures, stores and preserves the research output and makes it available to the research community through Open Access Protocols.

The aim of the participating Trusts was to:

• make their combined research visible
• create exposure to the work done within the Trusts and to connect with internal and external colleagues
• upload PDFs rather than full-text links

In one month, using posters and social media to advertise, ORDA satisfied 7 inter library loan requests, saving both staff time and money.

The libraries use Sherpa Romeo to check for copyright restrictions and chose DSpace, a small software provider to host the repoistory.

The support provided was excellent but required strong communication and negotiating skills.

The partnership has two ORDA champions who spread the word amongst junior doctors. This has helped with usage. The next step is to get the community health service Trust on board and establish individual profiles for staff.