Rare books are defined as printed books or manuscripts that, because of age, uniqueness, monetary or historic value, scarcity or limited/nonexistent holdings elsewhere, are housed separately from the circulating collections in a secure location.
Special collections are identified groups of library holdings that have been arranged by theme, provenance, format, or subject comprehensiveness/intentional groupings. Special collections are usually housed separately from the general collections, but may be distributed throughout the general collections and intellectually grouped through guides, finding aids, or catalog access. Rare books may be part of a special collection.
