Celebrating Libraries week by Librarian Henry Young

Henry Young is our local librarian at Bexhill Library who we have been working with during our exhibition, Roy Voss: The Way Things Are.  Henry has selected a range of books which correspond to the key themes and ideas around Voss’ new commission. To celebrate Libraries week, Henry has written a few words about his role at Bexhill Library and about the books he has chosen below.

“I am a Generic librarian: Schools and Museum librarian; Children’s librarian; Adult librarian; Information and Reference librarian and Equal Access librarian all rolled into one!  This means that I have no “typical days”; I can spend the morning reading ‘Shark in the park’ (Sharratt, N) to 7 year olds and the afternoon facilitating computer sessions for the digitally excluded.  I am part of a team responsible for the adult, children’s, reference and Large Print / spoken word stock in all the libraries in the East Sussex, which is exhilarating and healthily intimidating in equal measure!

I love working at the Library Store, we provide a Museum loan service to schools and have hundreds of preserved animals, from tiny tadpoles and bird embryos to foxes and badgers.  And even creepier, mummified animals: crocodiles, snakes wrapped in cloth and coated in resin to preserve them.  I like to think that at night they all come to life, like a scene from ‘Night at the Museum’.

The Library Store is where all the fascinating old books live when they have been shunted out of libraries by new paperback neophytes!  It was this collection I mined when staff from the De La Warr Pavilion asked me to support Roy Voss: The Way Things Are exhibition.  I was first sent a list of key themes of the exhibition: Victorian resorts; seaside attractions; cabinetmaking et al.  I searched our catalogue for books that nobody had borrowed in 7 years – books that were sad, shelved and desperate to be read and loved again (yes I like to think the books come to life too).  I was looking for idiosyncratic titles; or rather books that the passage of time has rendered charmingly dated.  I hope you enjoy.”

When visiting the Ground Floor Gallery, you can find the books selected on the Look-Think-Make table as you enter the gallery. Open everyday 10am – 6pm.