Books have always been a medium that people reached out to in order to gain new knowledge, immerse themselves in various imaginary worlds or perhaps learn about history. However, it is not only the content that is important with books. The physical aspects of books and printing methods throughout history can give us insight into the culture and intellectual spirit of a certain time period. Individual books are therefore very important because they provide evidence of the past, both in terms of content and when studying the way in which they were physically created. Each book has its own special value, but some books are certainly more valuable than others. The motivation to write about rare and old books came from a great love for physical copies of books and an interest in their history. All books must be treated with special care in order to preserve them in the long term, but the special value of rare and old books requires a series of special activities to preserve and protect them over time and use. In the introductory part of the paper, a brief history of the book will be explained, what rare books are and what criteria are used to determine their value. In the second part, the physical factors that must be met during the preservation of physical copies of old and rare books and the ways in which the library collects such material will be discussed. Also, something more will be said about the digitization process as a way of protecting old and rare material. In the research part of the work, it will be investigated whether library users use the services related to the RARA Collection of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, the procedure by which they gain access to the collection and under what conditions, and which services related to the collection are available to them and how users can access them. They will also be asked how much they know about the collection itself and their opinion on the improvement of services related to the RARA Collection.