Disentangling Digital Preservation Risk: An Interdisciplinary Exploration and Solution
Memory institutions such as the British Library face the important challenge of preserving their digital collections for future generations. Disciplinary efforts to address this challenge are extensive but demonstrate significant inconsistency and uncertainty about how the field understands risk, as well as what it considers to be a valid response. Moreover, they are often not easily aligned with wider, organisational risk management practices. This research, undertaken at the British Library as a practice-based PhD, addresses that problem by asking the question ‘how can the nature and complexity of digital preservation risk be more thoroughly and consistently represented, so as to support the foundations for a more flexible yet comprehensive preservation planning risk response?’

A design science research methodology provided the framework for the research. Requirements for a new solution were established through a thorough review of the problem space. Risk science provided the structure for a new, meaningful conceptual definition of digital preservation risk, distinguishing between the concept of risk and its characterisation. Analysis of the risk source concept against this definition led to the design and population of a new conceptual reference model for digital preservation risk: CHARM. A series of methods were designed that demonstrate different ways to use the model, aligning with international risk management standards and practices. The outputs of these methods can subsequently inform a comprehensive preservation planning risk response.

This research makes a significant and original contribution to knowledge with the field’s first reference model of digital preservation risk. It demonstrates that by drawing on risk science, digital preservation risk can be more consistently expressed, more thoroughly represented and more clearly demonstrated to stakeholders than before. Through its contribution of a new model for defining the digital preservation risk domain alongside three methods for applying it, the research represents a clear improvement-based and prescriptive contribution to knowledge. It provides not only a deeper understanding of the problem but also a new solution for responding to digital preservation risk, designed at the British Library but relevant to all in the wider community who share their challenge.