2025 Library Memoirs

It's the end of the school year, and what a year it's been. We library staff have had the privilege of watching a lot of it from the front desk, whether it's senior shenanigans or Freshmen filmmakers. We decided to take our last blog post of the year as an opportunity to reflect on some of our favorite memories from the 2024-25 year here at the library. So without further ado...

Jonathan:

For me, one of the highlights throughout the year was Dr. Coppenger. Every time he passed the front desk, he would give us a cheerful greeting or a humorous remark. I quickly knew which adapter he borrowed and could check it out as he approached. “Oh, thank you so much. You’re such a bright young man,” he’d say when I helped fix tech issues for his projector, or find cables he needed. One day he walked out from the reading room to the desk, turned to look at us and said, “They don’t pay you and I nearly enough, do you know that? For all that we go through? I’m going to go get us a raise.” We all laughed. When I was scanning inventory in the basement for most of my shifts during Chalcedon term, we often chatted when he came through to his office, and he insisted I take advantage of the large snack collection he brought to his classes. He certainly brightened the days at the front desk, and we’ll miss him next year.

Leah: 

Every once in a while, a sweet lady will walk up to the library desk with her caretaker and ask for stamps or stickers to put on a white envelope which she keeps in a ziplock bag. She makes her way around town, apparently, asking for stamps and stickers and looking for Waldo. We’ve started storing stickers in the desk just for her, but, unfortunately, we can never satisfy her search for Waldo. I hadn’t seen her in a while, but sometime during the first week of April I encountered her in Friendship Square as she had just exited the commons door. I stopped to greet her and asked if she had collected any good stickers that day. To which she replied, “I found Waldo!” Apparently a simple April fools prank which likely did not brighten anyone’s day at NSA, made a world of difference to this lady who finally completed her quest for the elusive Waldo.

Van: 

I think they replaced the old chairs for my sake. The new chairs rock. Literally. The old ones, as I soon learned, did not. Not literally, nor figuratively either. They flipped, and I with them, disrupting everyone's studies with a loud THUD!  

You have got to love the awkward moments of working at Tyndale Library. If you don’t, your life will only be miserable. As a library worker, your humility is through the roof. Look a classmate in the eye and ask them their name. Get a drink from the keurig and bless everyone’s ears with the guttural groan and splutter of your brewing beverage. Fiddle with the crinkly wrapper of your on-shift snack. Crunch on some chips as you sit at the desk, hustling to wipe your orange-dusted fingers before you can take the book a patron is handing you. Try to squeeze behind a student in the 800s. Reach over someone’s head to reshelf a book. Stand silently, looming in the ignorant periphery of the guy wearing headphones, debating whether to tell him the library is closing or just to turn out the lights.  

You know what they say: “Silence is golden, but awkward silence is…”

Mason:

So, Jonathan stole Dr. Coppenger so now I have to come up with something new. I think my favorite part of Tyndale Library is people thinking they can't be overheard when they are very audible, even from the desk. Especially on Tuesdays in the middle terms people seem to think that we librarians have no ears as they love to tell their strange and embarrassing stories. For their sake, I won't repeat any, but let us just say there's a reason we whisper in the Library. Also, during finals weeks I got plenty of free studying by going and shelf reading near the freshman as they attempted to cram the Psalms, the covenant, and anything else they could in before their finals. The amount of ughs, aghs, and blehs you hear go up exponentially in that week, and it's always entertaining. 

Christina:

One intriguing feature of working in Tyndale library is the chance to see what other NSA students are reading. There’s a rhythm to checkouts. The hopeful student who shows up at your desk without a book in sight? Likely, they are anxiously hoping to snatch a reserve text on their way to class. The freshman lugging every book on baptism? You know what class they are working on. The upperclassmen with a stack of seemingly random works pulled from exotic corners of the library? Thesis is in their sights. Occasionally, someone appears at the desk near the end of finals week and holds out an assortment of lighthearted fiction works. You smile at a friend well met, a fellow bookworm embracing the life of the bibliophile at heart.

April brought national library week with it, and Tyndale celebrated with not one, but two weeks of our annual book sale. We on the library staff browsed the tables daily, alongside fellow students and faculty members. There’s always the expectation of a surprise, a diamond in the rough, a work you didn’t know you needed on your reading list, but there it is, unavoidable. At the end of the day, I was encouraged to see that we here at NSA really do take books seriously. Feeling doubtful of that? Come spend a day in the library.

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Thank you all for a great year, and we look forward to seeing you in the fall!

~The Tyndale Library Staff