What happens to those treasures if natural or man made disaster strikes?

Like the Library at Alexandria - destroyed in bits and then totally in the 4th century AD? They cease to exist.

People have been predicting the "death of the book" for 20 years or more, and book sales are actually increasing. The Kindle has, so far, made little impact on the existence of books as physical entities, but it will be interesting to see the impact of the iPad (beautifully parodied by Steve Bell in the UK's Guardian newspaper as the "iPant"). As somebody said to me, will s/h bookshops and charity shops be able to sell you a virtual book for your iPad for 50p? Probably not... Vinyl was thought to have disappeared as a recording medium, but it didn't. It still exists, and a lot of cutting edge modern music is made specifically for it.

However, what is different about the book and record market is the distribution method - with online sales causing the closure of bookstores and record stores.