[keskival]

Are there digital scans though?

Edit:

It seems there's a lot of digitalized materials in UCL online archives, but I would be surprised if all documents were digitalized:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/collection...

[thyristan]

I don't know if there are digital scans. But that there aren't proves the OPs point that researchers can't be THAT interested after all, if they didn't even take scans of the documents.

[Teever]

Scans cost money.

We shouldn't let the value of something be determined by the budgets and personal tastes of researchers from a random period in history.

Look at the kind of historical artifacts that provide untold insight into ancient societies. Many of these artifacts only exist today because they were accidentally buried or boarded up in a wall and forgotten about while all others were wiped from the world for whatever reason, be it simply recycling or a more malevolent and systematic purge by motivated individuals.

We don't know what is valuable so we should assume that it is all valuable.