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Harry is right, this is a VERY real issue. I face it on several fronts.
What format does my company use to distribute documents? Right now we've settled on PDF but it seems XML may eventually push that aside.
Our older CAD files, from when we used different programs and Unix machines, are a major issue because conversions to our current formats are hit-and-miss yet these product lines must be maintained.
For the hobbyist, perhaps the greatest issue is not the file format but rather the storage medium. Read any 8" floppies lately? How about 5.25"? Or Zip drives? My new PC's don't even handle 3.5" floppies any more. Professionally we use backed-up hard drives but that gets a little cumbersome or expensive for personal use.
On the format side, don't be so sure you'll have nifty format conversion from, say, Epub, in 20 years. If something falls far enough out of favor it gets awfully niche-y. The common answer, if you care about your library, is to keep converting and re-filing as technology advances as much as possible. Less common is, I know people who essentially put some hardware in time capsules, like mothballing a current PC. I wish this never happens, as I have to sometimes work on an old Mac, circa 1985, to extract catalog information (some of our product lines date back to the 1940's). Darn good thing current Quark Express versions can read those ancient files but I still have some manual clean-up to do after conversion.
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