Managing risks to big stuff: Risk assessment and reduction at the Canada Science and Technology Museum

Creator: Irene Karsten, Simon Lambert, Sue Warren & Stefan Michalski

Date: 2013

Introduction: A risk management perspective keeps the focus on the goal of preventive conservation, which is to “[convey] a collection, with as much and as many possible values intact, from one point in time to a point in time in the future” (Waller and Michalski 2005, p. 735). To do this, we use an approach that provides:

1. a common scale for magnitude of all risks…§
2. a prediction of the magnitude of each risk if nothing is changed; and, §
3. a prediction of how these magnitudes will change if certain improvements are made. (Waller and Michalski 2004, p. 3)

This approach allows those responsible for collections to compare all risks and identify those that could cause the greatest loss in collection value over a certain period. An institution can then devote its limited resources to projects that reduce those risks, projects that will, therefore, have the greatest impact on collections preservation

Reference: Irene Karsten, Simon Lambert, Sue Warren & Stefan Michalski, ‘Managing risks to big stuff: Risk assessment and reduction at the Canada Science and Technology Museum’, 2013

DOI Link:

Karsten, Irene, Lambert, Simon, Warren, Sue, & Michalski, Stefan. (2013). Managing risks to big stuff: Risk assessment and reduction at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4087049