In the early 1950s, Roberts began his career at
Lambeth Palace Library in
London. In 1958, he was appointed as an Assistant Keeper at the
British Museum, where the collections which were later to form the
British Library were then located. In 1961, he became joint secretary of the
Bibliographical Society with Sir
Frank Francis, a post he held for 20 years. In 1974, Roberts returned to Oxford to become Keeper of Printed Books in the
Bodleian Library of the
University of Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of
Wolfson College in association with his post, and became the college's
Vice-gerent (deputy head of the college) during 1983–84. At the Bodleian Library, Roberts oversaw the introduction of computerised cataloguing and the acquisition of important collections such as the
Dunston Collection in 1981, the
Marlborough Vicars Library in 1985, and the
Opie Collection of Children's Literature in 1988. In 1983, he was elected a Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries in London. On the premature death of
John Jolliffe (
Bodley's Librarian) in 1985, he became Acting Librarian and then Deputy Librarian, a post that he held until his retirement in 1997. Jointly with Andrew Watson in the early 1970s, Roberts edited ''John Dee's Library Catalogue
. John Dee (1527–1608/9) was a consultant to Queen Elizabeth I who devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy and divination. They published a new edition in 1990 and continued to provide amendments and corrections. Roberts also contributed to the planning of the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature'', with his colleague Ian Willison. He provided much of the
poetry section. Roberts married Anne Duce and they had two children. While working at Oxford, he lived at the village of
Tackley in
Oxfordshire, north of
Oxford. == References ==