Revolution in the Library

Abstract

Historians journalists, who find revolutions in every twist and turn of political events, intellectual movements, technological innovations, sartorial fashions, historians like to think that their revolutions last more than a month or two, or a year or two, or even a decade or two. Indeed, some historians, older historians like myself, are so sparing in their use of the word that they reserve it for. changes that dramatically alter the course of entire centuries. Thus the Cromwellian revolution in En-