Maintaining digital records would probably require some man hours to watch them over the years, and you'd probably need to hire some tech labor to migrate the data every so often. That long-term maintenance cost can't be ignored.

But also don't neglect the long term costs of setting aside thousands of square feet, usually in an expensive metropolis, for storage.

I mean, I know as a programmer it wouldn't be a ton of effort to store a few terabytes on a local machine, make offsite backups, and write a program every 10 years to re-jigger the technology. Renting out an extra bedroom which I would fill with library shelves would be far more expensive.