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.

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.

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

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

The notion of 'history from below' hit the history profession in England very hard around the time I came to Oxford in the early 1960s.