[1] The library's rare book, manuscript, and map collections encompass a variety of topics related to the history of European exploration and colonization of the New World until circa 1825.

Beginning in 1845, Brown began traveling throughout Europe in search of books and materials related European exploration and colonization of the New World.

The Library is housed in a Beaux-Arts style building on Brown's main green, designed by the architects Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, and completed in 1904.

The collection of the John Carter Brown Library begins chronologically with fifteenth-century editions of Columbus's celebrated "letter" to the Spanish court announcing the discovery of lands to the west.

In 2012, a group of Brown undergraduates and scholars deciphered an encoded essay in the hand of Roger Williams, scrawled in the marginalia of a book within the Library's holdings.

Safier was preceded by: Edward L. Widmer (2006–2012); Norman Fiering (1983–2006); Thomas R. Adams (1958–1982); Lawrence C. Wroth (1924–1957);[19] Worthington C. Ford (1917–1922); Champlin Burrage (1916); George Parker Winship (1895–1915).