The Christie Hospital

A case study of an institutional repository success.

The Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

“The Christie has been named, by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), as one of the best hospitals providing opportunities for patients to take part in clinical research studies.

The Christie has one of the largest trials portfolios in the UK, with over 550 active clinical trials……..part of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre working with The University of Manchester and Cancer Research UK. We are also one of seven partners in the Manchester Academic Health Science Research Centre.” Christie.nhs.uk. (2017). A profile of The Christie (opens in a new window).

In 2007 The Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust developed an institutional repository for the discovery of research papers. Initially it was an in-house SQL database using Microsoft Access created by the Trust IT department, with a web version available via their internet pages. It linked out to some full text via Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and was searchable by keyword or author.

The content was populated mainly by library staff sourcing citations via Pubmed and ISI Web of Science imports which were then cleaned up, some items linked out to the full text, some had an abstract and others just had a citation. It was possible to produce reports out of the database to share with the research department. In addition to this Trust staff were encouraged to deposit information about new publications.

The content started in 2008 and they worked back to 1945. However by 2010 the project had outgrown the database and any developments were dependent on the time the Trust IT department had to commit to this project.

In 2010 they moved to a DSpace solution which is open source software with greater functionally than their current system and they bought it as an externally hosted system. They could create communities, continue to import records, but could now easily export to reference management software. This solution was also used by Manchester Metropolitan University so they were able to see it in use.  

The Christie paid for the hosted version to remove the need for in house IT support and to manage maintenance and upgrades; however there is an annual cost for this.  As the DSpace solution is open source software it can be hosted internally, if the organisation has the support and infrastructure to make it web based, however this was not the preferred solution for The Christie for the reasons mentioned above.

The DSpace respository is the backend database which uses Dublin Core Metadata standards, these field headings are controlled for inputting consistency; the interface has changed hands a few times during The Christie’s time using DSpace and they currently purchase the interface through Atmire. They do store some full text but only after checking the Sherpa/Romeo site to ensure they are adhering to the permissions allowed by the publisher.

Where full text cannot be stored they link out and  they include citations if not full text is available as with their previous solution. The library team continue to manage the updating and sourcing of the research papers.