This paper seeks to advance digital preservation theory and practice by presenting an evidence-based model for identifying barriers to digital content rendering within a bit-level preservation repository. It details the results of an experiment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign library, where the authors procured a random sample of files from their institution’s digital preservation repository and tested their ability to open said files using software specified in local policies. This sampling regime furnished a preliminary portrait of local file rendering challenges, and thus preservation risk, grounded not in nominal preferences for one format’s characteristics over another, but in empirical evidence of what types of files present genuine barriers to staff and patron access. This research produced meaningful diagnostic data to inform file format policymaking for the repository.

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