My work has taken me from historical research to involvement in electronic publishing ventures to the directorship of the Harvard University Libraries.

Digital data are more fragile than printed material.

The American revolutionaries believed in the power of the word. But they had only word of mouth and the printing press. We have the Internet.

It's important to make clear to all the schools at Harvard the central role of the library.

As president of the American Historical Association, I started a programme to make dissertations into e-books in 1999. Before I knew it, I was involved in other electronic projects. Harvard invited me to become director of the libraries in 2007.

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn't want to be a journalist - I wanted to be a historian.