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

Digital data are more fragile than printed material.

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

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.

The peasant of early modern France inhabited a world of step-mothers and orphans, of inexorable, unending toil, and of brutal emotions, both raw and repressed.The human condition has changed so much since then that we can hardly imagine the way it appeared to people whose lives really were nasty, brutish, and short. This is why we need to reread Mother Goose.

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