In 1857 the San Francisco Board of Education established Minns' Evening Normal School for current and prospective teachers in the city. Named after its principal, George W. Minns, the institution was formally established as the first California State Normal School by the State Legislature in 1862. A decade later, the Legislature voted to move the Normal School to San José, and the school relocated to its new home on Washington Square prior to the fall term of 1872. After a fire destroyed the Normal School building in 1880, the Legislature authorized $200,000 to construct a new building on the same site. Completed in 1881, the building was commonly referred to as the Second State Normal School. After several names and curriculum changes, Minns' Normal school is now San José State University, offering more than 134 bachelor's and master's degrees with 110 concentrations, and is recognized as one of the top public universities granting such degrees in the West.

The San José State University Library can trace its origins to the early days of the California State Normal School, which provided funding to purchase books and other materials for a campus library in the 1860s. The first California State Normal School building in San José was completed in 1872, with a new library located on the first floor. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880, but most of the library's 2,000 volumes were saved. Further expansion of the college library occurred in 1942 with the construction of a Library Annex in 1956, which extended northward toward the old public 1901 Carnegie Library (corner of Fourth and San Fernando Streets). The Carnegie building had ceased being a public library in 1936, and was sold to the college for use as a Student Union. In 1961, the Carnegie Library was destroyed to make room for Library North, a new building later to be named Wahlquist.

In the 1970s many San José State campus buildings were deemed unsafe and were destroyed, including the 1910 library. The Robert D. Clark Library, completed in 1982, became the home to new acquisitions, while older materials remained in the John T. Wahlquist library building. In the early 1990s, SJSU President Robert L. Caret and San José mayor Susan Hammer began negotiations to build a joint university and city library. In 2000, the Wahlquist Library was destroyed to make space for the construction of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on October 20, 2000 and the library opened on August 1, 2003.