Robert Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specialized in 18th-century France. Read full biography of Robert Darnton →
I believe we should celebrate new possibilities of combining the printed codex with electronic technology... The information ecology is getting... →
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... →
Thanks to modern technology, we now can deliver every text in every research library to every citizen in our country, and to everyone in the world.... →
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.
It's important to make clear to all the schools at Harvard the central role of the library.
People think that when you use Google you're finding exactly what you need, but really, you need expert help.
Texts are always in flux.
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.
We need librarians who can handle this tremendous jumble of information that is in cyberspace.
All of us are citizens in a republic much larger than the Republic of America. It is the Republic of Letters, a realm of the mind that extends... →
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... →
I would not minimize the digital divide, which separates the computerized world from the rest, nor would I underestimate the importance of... →
Robert Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specialized in 18th-century France.