I'm sure the citizens of the Vatican City State will rise up and demand public access any day now.

They even might find books by Otto Corvin ....

Maybe the sovereignty of the Vatican should be clawed back. I wouldn't be the first of Mussolini's decisions to be undone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty

The reason given for not digitizing it was "too expensive". That's the professional archivers talking again, overlooking that everyone has a digitizing machine in their pocket.

I wonder how many more libraries will get lost before people start being pragmatic about this.

the issue is your lay people will damage the books, or may not have access to the imaging technologies you need to read otherwise illegible text. For example in some cases with faded ink or very weak paper x-ray may be applied.

Oh phooey. Sure, some of the books need special treatment. But I'm sure the vast majority are more than amenable to click turn page click turn page click turn page with one hand on the camera and the other turning pages. I've done it myself for things like family albums, scrapbooks, etc. Piece of cake.

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.

I agree, I think these professional archivists are letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. There is no real reason they couldn't give a large team of interns armed with smartphones a crash course in how to turn the pages of a book without tearing them and set them loose digitizing entire libraries in days; then afterwards they could take their time with their high powered x-ray 10 gazillion dpi scanners or whatever the hell they'd like to use.

What we're seeing from archivists is a prime example of gatekeeping and job security.

Finally, someone understands my point.