Robert Darnton, bekannt nicht zuletzt durch seine Studien über das Buchwesen im 18. Jahrhundert, hat es inzwischen zum Direktor einer der besten Bibliotheken der Welt gebracht: der Universitätsbibliothek in Harvard. In der New York Review of Books schreibt er in dieser Rolle über die gegenwärtig größten Probleme der Forschungsbibliotheken. Dabei liefert er eine beeindruckende Aufzählung des aktuellen Bestands:

I can even begin happily, at least in describing the state of the university library at Harvard. True, the economic crisis hit us hard, so hard that we must do some fundamental reorganizing, but we can take measures to make a great library greater, and we can put our current difficulties into perspective by seeing them in the light of a long history. Having begun in 1638 with the 400 books in John Harvard’s library, we now have accumulated nearly 17 million volumes and 400 million manuscript and archival items scattered through 45,000 distinct collections. I could string out the statistics indefinitely. We collect in more than 350 languages and many different formats. We have 12.8 million digital files, more than 100,000 serials, nearly 10 million photographs, online records of 3.4 million zoological specimens, and endlessly rich special collections, including the largest library of Chinese works outside of China (with the exception of the Library of Congress) and more Ukrainian titles than exist in Ukraine.