Quotes by Robert Darnton

About Robert Darnton:

Robert Choate Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specializes in 18th-century France.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

People sometimes announce that we have entered 'the information age' as if information did not exist in other times. I think that every age was an age of information, each in its own way and according to the available media.

Robert Darnton

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.

Robert Darnton

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 everywhere, without police, national boundaries, or disciplinary frontiers.

Robert Darnton

We need librarians who can handle this tremendous jumble of information that is in cyberspace.

Robert Darnton

People think that when you use Google you're finding exactly what you need, but really, you need expert help.

Robert Darnton

As president of the American Historical Association, I started a programme to make dissertations into e-books in 1999. Before I knew it, I was involved in other electronic projects. Harvard invited me to become director of the libraries in 2007.

Robert Darnton

Digital data are more fragile than printed material.

Robert Darnton

While confronting the problems of the present, I often find myself thinking back to the world of books as it was experienced by the Founding Fathers and the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Robert Darnton

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

Robert Darnton

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

Robert Darnton

Texts are always in flux.

Robert Darnton

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. If we fail to do so, we are not living up to our civic duty.

Robert Darnton

I believe we should celebrate new possibilities of combining the printed codex with electronic technology... The information ecology is getting richer, not thinner.

Robert Darnton

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 acad...

Robert Darnton

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

Robert Darnton

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.

Robert Darnton

When you tell people you're in history, they give you this pained expression because that was the course they hated in high school. But history can be exciting, intellectually rigorous, and fun.

Robert Darnton

It simply is not true that everything is now on the Internet, but it is true that the digital resources available through the Internet have enormous potential for education and even for self-empowerment of individuals.

Robert Darnton

We are living in one of those rare moments in history when things may come apart and be put back together again in ways that will determine the future for decades or more, despite the endless innovations of technology.

Robert Darnton

The idea of a national digital library has been in the air for a long time, and there was a danger that some people would feel that it's their property, so to speak.

Robert Darnton

Author Bio

  • NameRobert Darnton
  • DescriptionAmerican historian
  • BornMay 10, 1939
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionLibrarian; Historian
  • AwardsKnight Of The Legion Of Honour; Officier Des Arts Et Des Lettres?; MacArthur Fellows Program