Rare books and manuscripts are part of the global cultural heritage. Their significance as intellectual creations, historic collections, and objets d’art exceed boundaries of language, state or period. Scholars, librarians, book and art historians, bibliophiles, and library users from all over the world read, study, and admire them. Special collections preserve these treasures with great care. They are the sources of history, the evidence that can be interrogated by new researchers who ask their own questions. Through archives and publications, previous generations speak to us with original voices.