Help from the Tyndale House

The Tyndale House (in Cambridge) is a public research library that specialises in Biblical Studies.  It is private in the sense that one must apply for access and it is exclusively used by scholars and research students.  Also, it has a strong evangelical heritage.  American evangelical scholars will not infrequently spend parts of their sabbatical at the Tyndale House.  Some of the staff at the Tyndale House are also, to my knowledge, professors at Cambridge University. 

 How can they help?  Well, if you study in England, they are bound to have just about anything you are looking for in Biblical Studies.  But, they can help in another way – their online library catalogue (‘Tyncat’).  It is no ordinary catalogue.  It has three very useful additional features. 

 First, if you search for a book, let’s say The Paul Quest (Ben Witherington), the book will come up and to the left of the title will be a couple of links.  These links tell you whether this book is fully searchable on Amazon (and it will furnish a picture if it is).  If it is not searchable on Amazon, it will provide a link to Google Scholar to see if it is searchable/readable on Google.  You press the link and it immediately takes you into Google Scholar and tries to locate the book (the best way to understand what I am saying is to try it!).  This is great because it saves time trying to search for the book online to read (if possible).

Second, to the right of the title of the book, in Tyncat, will be a search link for finding the book used (if you want to purchase it).  Once again, you could do it some other way, but Tyncat will save you some time.

Third, if you double-click on the title, it will open another window that will give you more detail on the book.  One helpful addition is that the catalogue will automatically show you how to cite the book in a bibliography offering both the MLA style and the APA (author-date) citation style.  A bonus feature on this page, as well, is the opportunity to link to SBL’s book review website to find a book review.

Now, I will warn you that the amazon link is sometimes just wrong in that the picture on Tyncat clearly shows the book with the ‘search inside’ symbol at the top.  But, when you click it and go to Amazon, the book is not actually searchable. I’m still trying to figure out why, but my guess is that at some point Amazon did some restructuring and Tyncat has not gone back to update their information (which is understandable).