But whose time and energy? I'm not personally going to spend hundreds of hours scanning and organizing stuff because someone someday might get some value out of it. Maybe a few things I find especially noteworthy or that I myself might want a digital copy of. But not in general.
Researchers mostly. They are the one currently going through stuff from the Roman Empire through the 80's to try to understand history better. You can see a thread on HN that is about what people ate in the Roman Empire https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27310179. I also remember a youtube channel called "Depression Cooking" where an old lady explained what they ate and how they lived during the great depression. You can argue about the value of knowing what romans or people during the great depression ate, but our society seems to value knowing the past.
My point is that future historians and researchers can spend however much time and energy they want. But I mostly will not go out of my way to assist them. Not out of any active desire not to help them but because I'm mostly not willing to put a lot of time/effort into it.
