L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library

Rare book and manuscript library in Provo, Utah, United States BYU Special Collections The L. Tom Perry Special Collections is the special collections department of Brigham Young University (BYU)'s Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah. Founded in 1957 with 1,000 books and 50 manuscript collections, as of 2016 the Library's special collections contained over 300,000 books, 11,000 manuscript collections, and over 2.5 million photographs, among many other rare and unique research materials. Since its inception, the special collections have been housed in numerous places including the crawl space of a university building and a wholesale grocery warehouse. Since 2016, the special collections have been located on the first floor of the Harold B. Lee Library and is considered to hold "the finest collection of rare books in the Intermountain West and the second finest Mormon collection in existence". Early collections (pre-1955) Recording and preserving history had been an important part of the mission of BYU even before an official archive was established. Documentation of BYU began in 1875 and has grown since then. Early efforts to collect included a Brigham Young Academy expedition to S