A reading chair upholstered in bright canary yellow, situated amid the stacks on this subterranean level, recalls the history of mining south of San José.

A tenfold light fixture above the children's story telling area alludes through its layout to a 19th century diagram of the Sephirotic Tree, a symbolic Arabic and Jewish mapping of the connections

A digital reader mounted on a wall adjacent to the checkout counter displays a real-time record of the total number of books checked out of the library system.

Eighty-one leather chairs, each marked with one of the forty-three cattle brands of the original San Jose ranchos (as recorded in 1819), "range" freely on the 2nd floor.

A corner fireplace (without fire) is built from bricks cast in the shape of books and marble selected for its smoky tendrils.

A vessel, formed in the shape of the redoubled profile of Dr.

Mirrors behind the books in the self-help section give us another perspective with which to reflect on ourselves, if we care or dare to.

Approximately the size of a French horn, a brass-plated, perforated sculptural representation of an inner ear replaces the grill of a public-address speaker in the ceiling of the Music Section.

The gateway to the Library's Special Collections displays 88 golden carburetors.

A carved volcanic stone table, alluding to Olmec sculpture, is placed among the standard Library tables in the vicinity of the archaeology collection.

The glass windows on the 7th Floor Bridge (located near the library's art and art history holdings) appear cracked.

The nineteenth-century idealist philosopher G.W.F.

These five functional reading tables, located adjacent to the geology section, map the shape of the major continental plates. The granite of each table was quarried from the continent it recalls.

This artwork is composed of white leather-bound books inserted among the mathematics collection. Zeno of Elea, in the 6th century BC, argued that motion was impossible.

A magnificent Redwood tree which had been growing on the site prior to construction of the Library had to be cut down to accommodate the new building.

The grill covers of the building's HVAC system have been masked with a sculptured surface using patterns derived from the breathing apparatus of living forms: in this case stomata , the respiration