Listen with headphones for best experience.

Join librarians, Vicky Worsfold and Caroline Penn, as they guide you around the National Art Library at the V&A – a calm and tranquil yet deeply sensory space, which is open to all.

Follow Vicky as she shows you how to handle precious books using a book sofa and weights (also called book snakes), and join Caroline as she cares for fragile objects with crinkly spines. Listen as they turn the pages of a 19th-century treasure from the library – a very large book called an elephant folio. Titled ‘The Birds of America’ by John James Audubon, it contains exquisite illustrations of birds, and is an example of a book that you could order.