[2] As of 2018[update], it is the largest library building in the western United States built in a single construction project, with over 475,000 square feet (44,000 m2) of space on eight floors and approximately 1.6 million volumes.

There, the non-fiction are indexed via the Dewey Decimal Classification and the fiction are sorted alphabetically by author's last name.

On floor 1, in the atrium, a large LED display shows in real time the number of item loans (books and other media such as CDs and DVDs) that the entire City Library System has made since 2000.

Throughout the library are artworks by Mel Chin; the title of the series is Recolecciones (Spanish for "recollections").

[6] Special collections within the library include, all on the 5th floor, the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, a California History Room, and the SJSU Special Collections & Archives.

[7] In the Koret Atrium on floor 1, there is a kiosk of eight public computers with Internet access for which a library card is not required.

Login to these computers requires a San Jose city library card number and PIN.

Access time is nominally limited to 2 hours per day per library card, but at the end of the session, if less than 90% of the public computers are busy, the user is granted another hour of session time; such extensions can continue as long as the library remains open.