Quite true, JiK. Only a small percentage of what ever was has survived, and most of that has considerable decay/delapidation or alteration. That's true of writing and images as much as anything else. But the big problem with digital storage as we understand it is that because of changes to formats, and so forth, it (currently) needs to be 'actively maintained' by transferring video tapes to CDs, Wordperfect to Word, etc etc in order to keep it accessible. As far as I know, that was not essential until the photographic/digital age. (Of course, copies were often taken for other reasons before then) Even with photographs, while the early systems (grass plates, film materials and so forth) certainly fade, they do so over a comparatively long period. Our very limited experience is that digitally based items can become inaccessible much faster, as in the BBC's Domesday project.