L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library

The L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library is the rare book and manuscript library at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. Founded in 1957 with 1,000 books and 50 manuscript collections, today it contains over 300,000 books, 11,000 manuscript collections, and over 2.5 million photographs. Since its inception the library has been housed in numerous places including the crawl space of a university building and a wholesale grocery warehouse. As of 2016 the special collections library is 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".

Recording and preserving history had been an important part of the mission of BYU even before an official archive was established. Documentation of the university began in 1875 and has grown since then. Early efforts to collect included a Brigham Young Academy expedition to South America in 1900–1901. The purpose of the expedition was to look for evidences to support The Book of Mormon; collectors gathered field notes, photos, botany samples, and correspondences.

Before the official inception of the University archives and special collections, Brigham Young University had already collected rare and expensive books and manuscripts that were housed in various places. One collection was the "Locked Case" collection, housed in a locked bookcase in the head librarian's office. By 1925, what would eventually become the university's special collections stacks were relocated to a small manuscript room in the Grant Library. In the 1930s BYU professor Wilford Poulson began to collect copies of various Mormon diaries, and staff librarian Newburn I. Butt transcribed and indexed hundreds of others.

S. Lyman Tyler was appointed library director in 1954 and from the beginning of his administration was particularly interested in establishing a university archival program. Tyler was a member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), and looked to the organization for guidance on how to establish a university archive. As early as the year he was appointed library director, Tyler was having informal conversations with university administrators about the importance of establishing a university archival system.

On 26 March 1956, BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson sent out a university directive that stated, "The director of libraries is also designated historian and archivist for the Unified Church School System." Effectively, this directive authorized the library director as an archivist as well, putting Tyler in an administrative position to create an archival system at BYU. Later that year in August, Tyler appointed Ralph Hansen to establish an archive at BYU. He began his efforts in September, housing the first documents in the attic of the Karl G. Maeser Building. This established the first archives at a Utah institution of higher learning.

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