ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with material which is normally kept in 'special' or 'rare book' collections. Many of the principles for cataloguing and classifying rare books were agreed by the beginning of this century and what has happened since then has been a gradual refinement of the principles according to the needs of scholarship. The use of computers for retrieval has completely changed previous methods. Huge amounts of bibliographical data on out of print books are already held in computer stores and more records are added every day. Closed access is the only moderately secure system for a valuable collection of out of print books. Repairs become necessary as a result of disasters, normal ageing and the wear and tear of use. It is, however, neither possible nor desirable to repair everything and the librarian must decide which books to try to keep and which to allow to wear away.
