It is located near the center of the Berkeley campus, facing Memorial Glade, and is adjacent to and physically connected with the Bancroft Library.

In 1900, Émile Bénard won an architectural competition for the design of the library, and the Neoclassical-style building was completed in 1911.

[2] At the library's entrance is a statue of Clemens holding a copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, sculpted by Gary Lee Price.

The Gardner (Main) Stacks is a four-story underground structure consisting of 52 miles of bookshelves, most of which are mobile shelving.

The Main Stacks is home to most of UC Berkeley's books covering the arts, humanities, and social sciences, although collections for certain specific fields (e.g., East Asian history) are housed separately in other libraries on campus.