Appendix A Risk - Assessment Workbook

Presents an overview of migration as a digital preservation strategy and introduces five reasons to migrate digital information. Presents risk measurement and impact scales used in this workbook. Explores file format issues associated with changes from one format to another. Discusses computer hardware and software features that influence methods of protecting digital information. Describes emerging documentation practices for digital information. Discusses administrative procedures that coordinate preservation activities. From our perspective, a successful preservation strategy is created when one or more risk assessments are completed, analyzed, and interpreted by archivists and administrators, and culminate in a clear, well-understood action plan. A risk assessment is simply a means of structuring the process of analyzing your risks. If the risk-assessment methodology is well-specified, different individuals or organizations, supplied with the same information about a digital file, should estimate similar risk values. This workbook is a risk-assessment tool. What this means and how it is to be used will become clearer as you work through the sections. The workbook will help you identify potential risks associated with migrating digital information, one of several options available for preserving digital information. In fact, our organizations routinely practice risk management. Traditional tasks, such as centrally housing materials, cataloging items to a position on a shelf, and binding loose items together , now have as their digital counterparts the creation of data centers, metadata, and data backups. Digital preservation is in its formative stage, and the use of risk-management procedures established today will seem exceptional until these procedures are integrated into standard practices. Why a workbook? In an ideal situation, the best risk assessments would be conducted by a team of experts, each a specialist in a particular area and with general knowledge of digital preservation. However, access to a single expert adviser is a luxury seldom available to archivists and data managers. In place of a human adviser, this workbook attempts to identify the information an expert might seek. When appropriate, the workbook provides definitions and brief issue summaries followed by questions and situation evaluations. It is hoped that this will provide a uniform method of organizing or structuring the assessment process so that all interested parties can be involved to their best advantage. Since digital collections differ appreciably in size, content, and format complexity, this workbook is general in focus. In proceeding through the workbook, you are encouraged to add, delete, or modify the questions to …