A friend is a curator at a museum. One exhibition is of the journals of soldiers from a particular war. Interesting research material, but not available anywhere on the web in digital form. As time passes this material will be largely forgotten because it has almost no digital signature.
If teachers asked their students to read this material and transcribe it to a digital form, the students might be more engaged with history and this material would be available to the world online.
Obviously there is much handwritten material of historical significance beyond war journals that we should transcribe to digital. Might even be a way to teach foreign languages based on the material selected.