By Janeal Thornock
janeal@newsroom.byu.edu
The new Special Collections section of the Harold B. Lee was named in honor of Elder L. Tom Perry, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Perry attended the ribbon cutting ceremony to officially mark the opening of the newly remodeled area Friday, May 26.
The Skaggs Foundation donated to the building of the new library and requested that the Special Collections Library be named after Elder Perry.
The Perry family attended, along with BYU officials and administrators.
The Special Collections Library was founded in 1957 and originally had only one curator, 1000 books and 50 manuscript collections.
Today there are 14 curators and 30 student employees of the library. There are 280,000 books, 8000 manuscript collections and 500,000 photographs.
The Special Collections Library has a wide variety of different collections including maps, music, printed books, manuscripts, posters and photographs.
Collections include Mormon and Western Americana, Renaissance/Reformation, Victorian Literature, Film Music, Photograph Archives, Folklore and Brigham Young University Archives.
The Conservation Laboratory uses advanced equipment and tools created before the Renaissance to preserve and restore Special Collections materials and archives.
The Special Collection Library's mission statement is to make these collections and archives available to the research activities of faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students attending BYU.