Seems like a clear case where public interest should override private property.
I wonder how many more libraries will get lost before people start being pragmatic about this.
All this handwringing about needing 10000 dpi scans and advanced imaging technology means no scans will get done, and there'll be a lot of sobbing and rending of hair when the next collection gets flooded, lost, chewed by mice, rotted to dust, stolen or goes up in smoke.
What we're seeing from archivists is a prime example of gatekeeping and job security.
>Now, with the benefit of today’s technological era, the Library is digitalising their entire collection of manuscripts, which includes over 80 000 codices, mostly from the Middle Ages and the Humanism Period.
One of the most flatly incredible manuscript discoveries of the nineteenth century is a short treatise called the "Didache." We knew that such a thing existed, because writers as early as the 3rd century mention it, but it was presumed lost. An 11th century manuscript of it was found in a library in 1875, and most scholars now believe that the text dates to the first century, making it the oldest known Christian "catechism" (one which, intriguingly, seems to stand outside the Pauline tradition).
Obviously, this was and is an absolutely amazing thing for students of late antiquity in general and early Christianity in particular, and it had been sitting there in plain sight (so to speak) for centuries. It would surprise me not at all if we find similar things in the Vatican collection.