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

I would not minimize the digital divide, which separates the computerized world from the rest, nor would I underestimate the importance of traditional books.

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.

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

The fact that I spend a lot of time in the 18th century doesn't mean I'm not concerned with the 21st.

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.

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