[CompleteWalker]

As I understand it, the cost of digitization is often regarded by archivists/special collections curators as a substantially more expensive than traditional methods of "store it in humidity controlled vault". In the frame of university archives/special collections considerations like, costs of specialized staff (or retraining staff to deal with digitized collections), software that allows for public access and upholds existing copyright restrictions, and future-proofing file formats can add up.

[skookumchuck]

I've digitized family letters, pictures, and home movies, and it doesn't take specialized skills to do it. Quite adequate results can be had with consumer equipment - even a phone camera is very good and fast at capturing documents.

Sometimes I suspect professional archivists would rather lose the material than use simple consumer equipment and techniques. (Not that there is any "technique" to using those Amazon video capture devices.)