The Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds an important collection of early Hawaiian imprints, dating from 1822 when printing first started in the Islands to about 1860. The 275 books and pamphlets forming the Hawaiian Imprint Collection consist largely of nineteenth-century school books, religious texts, and government documents and include some of the earliest works printed in Oahu and Maui. Many of these items are only known to exist in a few copies in research Libraries around the world, often with no other copy in the Continental United States.