"AS THE RARE BOOKS librarian at University College London, most of my work is fairly routine, if painstaking and methodical."

"But it can be extremely satisfying. I never really know what I will find when I open one of the many old and very precious books I work with. It might have beautiful, hand-colored illustrations; it might be inscribed by the author; or it might contain the bookplate of a famous collector. Such satisfactions might not mean much to outsiders or to people who haven't worked in our rarified world, but to scholars and historians and librarians and archivists, these are the little pleasures that keep us going."

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