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They make polyethylene sleeves to protect the cover art, and a variety of cardboard or plastic boxes for storage. The main thing, as was mentioned earlier, is records need to be stored in a vertical position to prevent warping. If you want them to last, it's also important to get a decent turntable with a good cartridge, relatively light tracking weight and an elliptical or preferably hyper-elliptical stylus (needle).

You need to clean records regularly before playing - dust particles love to hide in the grooves. The best cleaning tool in the past was Discwasher, but from reading recent reviews on Amazon it sounds like what's now being sold as Discwasher is kinda crappy. I still have my old high-quality Discwasher, so I haven't needed to look for a new one, but here's an ad for an Audio-Technica cleaner that appears to be pretty good: http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/av-accessories/m/10253771/

Cleaning is critical because when you play a record that has dust (often invisible) in the grooves, many of those particles get ground into the vinyl, causing permanent damage.

In terms of a receiver, keep in mind that most models currently sold don't have a phono input, and those that do, apart from the high-end stuff, tend to have a low-quality phono pre-amp. The hot ticket is to get a separate phono preamp with good audio specs, which can be paired with most any receiver. My system is an inexpensive Sherwood RX-4105 stereo receiver (which actually has very good amplifier specs) combined with an inexpensive TCC TC-750LC phono preamp that has great specs.

There are some inexpensive turntables with an onboard phono preamp (and usually a USB interface for connecting to a PC) - don't know about the specs, but that's another possible option.

I know it sounds like a lot of trouble and work, but once you get decent equipment and develop a routine for storing, cleaning and playing, it all becomes second-nature.