As a graduate student at Oxford in 1963, I began writing about books in revolutionary France, helping to found the discipline of book history. I was in my academic corner writing about Enlightenment ideals when the Internet exploded the world of academic communication in the 1990s.

In 2002, Google began an ambitious project to digitize every book in the world. It was intended as a search project: type in a query, and Google would show you snippets. They asked university libraries for books, which they would scan for free. At Harvard we didn't permit them to take works under copyright, but other libraries gave them everything.

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.

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

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

As a graduate student at Oxford in 1963, I began writing about books in revolutionary France, helping to found the discipline of book history. I was in my academic corner writing about Enlightenment ideals when the Internet exploded the world of academic communication in the 1990s.

Digital data are more fragile than printed material.