Plans were made in the early 1990s to raze the campus Administration building to allow for an expansion of Clark Library, but this plan ended in February 1997 when San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer and San Jose State University President Robert L. Caret announced their intention to build a new library that would serve as both the SJSU Library and the City of San Jose’s Main Library. The new library would be the first joint use library in the United States shared by a major university and a large public library.
In December 1999, the California State University Board of Trustees and San Jose’s City Council and Redevelopment Board approved two documents. The Development Agreement between the CSU and the San Jose Redevelopment Agency described how the partners would work together to design and build the 475,000-square-foot library. It specified how costs would be shared and how decisions would be made. The Joint Library Operating Agreement between the California State University and the City included agreements about governance, operations, and funding of utilities and maintenance and assigned the roles of “Co-Managers” of the new library to the City’s Library Director and the University’s Library Dean.
The Wahlquist buildings were demolished in 2000 to make way for construction of the new Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, which proceeded after a groundbreaking ceremony held on October 20, 2000, exactly 130 years to the day after the cornerstone was laid for the original San José Normal School building at the Washington Square site.
The grand opening ceremony brought the University community and the City’s leaders and residents together for a joyous celebration on August 15, 2003. It is fitting that the same site occupied at different times during the twentieth century by both a San José Public Library and a University Library is now occupied by one library containing both.
The architects were Carrier Johnson, Executive Architects; Gunnar Birkerts, Design Associate Architects; and Anderson Brulé, Local Associate Architects. Hansel Phelps construction Inc. was the General Contractor.
Today the King Library houses over 1.5 million volumes, seats more than 3,500 people and receives over 2 million visitors each year. It provides nearly 40 group study rooms and 300 public access computers as well as computer classrooms for librarians to teach information literacy to both SJSU students and the general public. Wifi is available throughout the building. Access to hundreds of general and academic research databases is available to library visitors. Visitors to the library are often delighted by the 35 works of public art created by Mel Chin and designed to link to the library’s collections and the diverse community that uses them.
Every year the King Library hosts visitors from libraries around the world who want to learn about this exciting collaboration and to see the library in operation. See a list of articles and papers about the King Library here.