[1] The six-story library building is of a contemporary, neoclassical style with a red-brick exterior highlighted by white sections along the top and on part of the eastern side.

The eastern side includes a white-faced rotunda that features a two-story atrium on the main floor.

[4] In July 1908, Ida Kidder was appointed as OAC’s first professionally trained librarian; her arrival marked a period of unparalleled growth.

[12] Initially, the new building also housed offices and classrooms, but within a decade the library expanded to occupy all of the structure.

[13] The 1918 building was located on the southeast corner of Campus Way and Waldo Place and after the 1941 addition, had about 76,000 square feet (7,100 m2) of space spread over three floors and a full basement.

[12] Designed in the neoclassical style, the exterior was made of bricks and contained decorative plaques constructed of concrete, with the gabled roof covered with tile.

[9] A mural painted by J. Leo Fairbanks was added to the main reading room in 1929 as a gift from the school's class of 1925.

[18] In 1936, the Works Progress Administration gave a decorative archway to the library to be installed over the south entrance to the building.

[20] The library was among several buildings vandalized by University of Oregon students in October 1945 during the run-up to the Civil War football game between the two schools.

[11] The new building was designed by architects Hamlin & Martin, and the cost rose to $2.4 million by the time the school accepted bids on the project in April 1962.

[31] In the same year as Waldron's departure, Melvin R. George took over as director of the library, which at that time had a $4.5 million annual budget and 72 employees.

[31] In 1986, a room was added to the library to accommodate a donation from alumnus Linus Pauling, which consisted of his papers and two Nobel Prizes.

[38] Designed in a contemporary, neoclassical style, the structure has a veneer of red brick, with white-colored aluminum solar screening on the rotunda and the fifth floor of the north side added for decoration.

[40] The undergraduate writing studio is housed on the second floor of the Valley Library,[41] after moving from its previous location in Waldo Hall in fall 2017.

The third floor contains collections of atlases, government documents, microforms and readers, and hosts the Mole Hole's chemistry tutoring services.

[44] The sixth floor is a silent study area for graduate students and only covers the southern two-thirds of the structure.

Most notably are the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers that contain 4,111 books and 2,230 boxes of material from the two alums of Oregon State.

[59] Also contained in the Special Collections and Archives are around 200,000 photographs, memorabilia, campus publications, and a variety of other specimens related to the history of Oregon State University and its faculty's work.

The Special Collections and Archives Research Center also include the papers of Bernard Malamud, William Appleman Williams, Milton Harris, Paul Emmett, David P. Shoemaker, Ewan Cameron, Fritz Marti, Eugene Starr, and Roger Hayward.