Mechanisms Linking Digitization Preservation Focus to Institutional Resilience in Uganda: A Comparative Mixed-Methods Framework

The robustness of digital collections in Uganda is frequently treated as a technical achievement, yet the institutional conditions under which digitisation strengthens rather than weakens long-term preservation capacity remain undertheorised. It distinguishes project-based digitisation from institutionalised preservation focus, conceptualises resilience as a capacity for adaptive persistence, and proposes four candidate mechanisms: workflow routinisation, redundancy in storage and metadata, legitimacy-driven resource mobilisation, and interpretive learning from failures. The framework combines within-case process tracing with cross-case configurational comparison, permitting researchers to interrogate how particular mechanisms operate across different institutional settings without presupposing uniform effects. The article offers a prospective research protocol, identifying operational proxies, sampling logic, comparison axes and coding priorities suited to Ugandan institutional contexts. Its contribution is methodological and conceptual: it shifts explanation from digital object survival to the organisational arrangements that make continued preservation possible under resource constraints.