Environmental Sustainability in Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage; Advancing a sufficiency approach for Cultural Heritage Organisations. A case study of the Finnish Heritage Agency

Starting from the human and societal need to safeguard cultural heritage (CH) in order to connect to past generations’ knowledge and human experience, digital preservation (DP) is a common practice undertaken by cultural heritage organisations (CHOs). DP is heavily relying on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) as the fundamental enabling equipment. However, ICT is coming with its own considerable environmental impacts, that are only expected to multiple due to the ongoing digital transformation in general, and of the CH sector in particular, that has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The debate on the environmental sustainability of ICT suggests that short-term technological fixes through efficiency are not enough. Therefore, a sufficiency approach needs also to be taken by the CHOs, that will extend beyond the equipment, to the DP process as well. This thesis, by taking an exploratory case study of the Finnish Heritage Agency (FHA) –and specifically their Archives and Information Services (AIS) department– delves into the current practice of the CHO and how a sufficiency approach in DP can be advanced for the FHA by the surrounding network of actors and initiatives. A sufficiency framework for DP of CH was developed, based on a literature review on sufficiency and on the Pendergrass et al. (2019) framework for environmentally sustainable DP. This was further used to analyse the data from 20 interviews in total, with FHA practitioners and actors from their surrounding Finnish network. The analysis of the case study shows that first, a common understanding of a sufficiency approach needs to be disseminated among the network. Moreover, that a qualitative function is needed for sufficiency in the DP of CH with consideration of the ICT use environmental impacts. For this, the rich interconnections and inclusive organisational structures of the network’s actors were found to potentially allow for a broader public participation in order the ‘enoughness’ of quality to be incorporated.