[PMoz99]

Yes, a tough ask. Shooting from the hip, one vision might be -

First, I think everything must be digitised. Accumulating and storing all the books, photos etc would probably be out of the realms of possibility, and looking forward I doubt people will travel to 'the mountain' as they have in the past to see the information anyway. Hell, I've got friends in their late 70's ordering and reading eBooks from the local libraries using their PC's in the comfort of their own home. The kids nowadays want everything electronic and instant. And I doubt they'll want to pay for it, although selling memberships to whatever is set up might be an option. So the mountain will need to be able to go to the people.

What is set up would become some sort of Legacy to all those who spent immeasurable amounts of their time, sweat, sanity and money to accumulate the information. The details of what and how to set up I'd leave to experts, but I'd say once the information is digitised it could be easily stored and managed. Either like a library with loans, returns etc, or simply as a searchable database or databases.

Payment to those who contribute? Maybe, based on loan-outs, downloads, whatever. Who pays? Dunno. I figure people will only pay for something if it is important to them. To our generation, what happened in WW2 (and other wars) probably has enough importance to entice us to pay for the information. Our children? Probably not. If anything, they'll be more interested in Syria, the coming China wars, WW3.

So if we want the information so painstakingly accumulated to live on, it will probably need to be free. Otherwise you run a real risk that nobody will bother to look at it. What good is it then?

Peter