The Reading Room

At the beginning of the school year, incoming freshmen are taken into a dark room, sat down in a chair, and have a bright light shone in their faces as they get their Populi profile picture taken against the background of Tyndale Library’s reading room. 

The reading room is a multi-purpose room that is filled to the brim with, in my opinion, the highest academia available to the NSA Student: Historical texts in the original language. This collection contains tomes that are invaluable as resources for your history or language papers, such as transcriptions of Sumerian cuneiform texts about Assurbanipal or Tiglath-Pileser, or Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica in his own words, or Ælfric’s Saints’ Lives in Old and Modern English. 

Beyond these primary sources, you can also find hidden gems such as the Chinese edition of Brent Pinkall’s book, Redeeming the Six Arts: A Classical, Christian Approach to Chinese Education, or all of the Asterix comics in Classical Latin, and so much more in so many different languages besides. 

But maybe you’re not a linguistic person—what does the reading room have for you? Well, the reading room is not only a room of original languages, but it is, as its name suggests, a reading room. This is Tyndale’s only study room, where students can take their homework, work on projects together, and research for their assignments. If the front of the library is too loud (or perhaps you are too loud for it!) but the study carrels in the back won’t let you collaborate with your classmates, the reading room is the place for you. If you have a study session of three or more people coming up, feel free to reserve the reading room so you can have the power to kick any students studying in there out. It’s an easy process, so don’t worry about any hassle, because it only takes about a minute to reserve. All you have to do is ask the librarian at the desk to reserve it for the hour you want (up to a month in advance), give them your name and email, and you’re set! 

But there’s one more thing that makes the reading room special: The Garaway Collection.

The reading room has a shelf lining its back wall that contains a collection of first-edition books by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, as well as others. Among the titles are Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis, The Old English Exodus: Text, Translation, and Commentary by J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Figure of Beatrice. If you are a fan of the Inklings, then the Garaway collection is the place for you. 

The reading room is the academic heart of Tyndale Library and is the bibliotechnical epitome of NSA’s education, since the more you learn at NSA, the more you’ll find in Tyndale Library’s reading room.