Club Hendy, while familiar to students, has several hidden treasures and some unknown history. Talking with Dean W. Bede Mitchell, many of these treasures and the history were discovered.

“The Lorimer Reading Room tends to be underutilized. Students find what they want initially, but do not look around,” Dean W. Bede Mitchell said. The Lorimer Reading Room is located on the fourth floor, which is a designated quiet zone of the library. The room is named in honor of George Lorimer, was donated by his now deceased wife, Linda Buford.

“There is a presentation practice room. You can reserve this room and go with a few friends and they watch and critique you,” says Dean Mitchell. The practice room is located on the first floor.

“We have a lot of adaptive learning equipment on the second floor. Most of the students who need this knows about them. But others can use [them] as well,” Dean Mitchell said. “[We also have] Hollywood type movies. [We have] between 2,000-3,000 films that students can checkout on the second floor.”

Dean Mitchell also addressed why the first floor can only be accessed from the second floor. “Where would we put a security gate on the first floor?” he said. “It is really for security purposes. Someone from the third floor could easily get a book and take the elevator down to the first floor.”

“We also have a seed library. We collect seeds of native plants….mostly vegetables but flowering plants [as well]. Students can come and check out the seed packets. It gives people a way to get a garden started. We encourage students who get seeds from us to come back and donate those seeds,” says Dean Mitchell.

Before leaving the interview, Dean Mitchell offers up an obscure fact about Henderson. He discusses the ARC, which stands for Automated Retrieval Collection. Tucked away in an area only accessed from behind the second floor collections desk, this machine retrieves books that are otherwise irretrievable in the library.

“[We are the] only one in Georgia that has this. [There are] only 30 or so in the country,” says Dean Mitchell. “Construction took about two years,” he says. Currently, the ARC is 25 percent full, according to Dean Mitchell. The project as well as the renovation of Henderson began in 2004 and was completed in 2008.