munson medical center needed a way to preserve and showcase the scholarly work of its clinicians, residents, and staff. nothing like this existed at the hospital. i researched, proposed, and designed the entire system — from software selection through database architecture, submission workflows, and copyright policies.
the goal was to create a structured, searchable system where authors could self-archive their work and where the hospital's research output would be visible and discoverable across departments.
scholarly output at munson — articles, posters, presentations, book chapters — had no centralized home. work was scattered across personal drives, department folders, and email attachments. there was no way to browse, search, or showcase what the hospital's researchers had produced. institutional knowledge was being lost.
i started by researching how other hospitals and academic institutions had built institutional repositories. i surveyed colleagues, reviewed 13 software platforms, and developed inclusion criteria for what types of knowledge assets should be included.
i then surveyed hospital staff to understand what they'd want to find in a repository and how they'd want to browse it. from there, i designed the database schema, defined the submission workflow, and wrote the policies around copyright permissions and content types.
the implementation was planned in four phases: foundation (software selection and policy), content build (adding initial submissions), go-live, and evaluation.
the schema was built to support both browsing and precision search, with 30+ medical specialty classifications, multiple document types, and full metadata for every submission.
select software, develop policy covering submission process, content, copyright permissions and workflow. begin promotion and marketing.
begin adding content, establish copyright permissions from submissions, continue outreach to clinical departments.
launch repository. solicit feedback from authors and users. continue adding content and establishing permissions.
evaluate use and processes. train authors to self-archive. expand to additional departments.
i evaluated 13 platforms across open source, proprietary, and institutional options before recommending eos knowledge builder and dspace as the strongest candidates.
this was the project that taught me how to think about information systems from the ground up. not just "where does this content go" but "who needs to find it, how will they look for it, and what happens when the system needs to grow." those questions have shaped every project since.