I work in an archives and for the reasons you mention many archives--with the exception of various national and large-scale archives--are failing in their efforts to preserve born digital records.<p>It's a thorny problem, really. In many cases, we have to preserve hardware required to decode information--think u-matic tape players, 5.25" floppies, Iomega zip drives, etc.--as well as software to decode the information on the files.