Just after Carole Kennemer arrived for work at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Main Library on Monday morning, ``Time to Say Goodbye'' played over the speaker system. The Andrea Bocelli-Sarah Brightman song captured the mood perfectly, said Kennemer, a part-time clerk. In less than an hour, San Jose's main library downtown would open its doors to the public for the last time.

``It was bittersweet,'' said Kennemer, who has worked in the library for six years. ``This is a wonderful old building. But we're moving into a grand new building.''

On Aug. 1, the new library, also named for King, is expected to open at San Fernando and Fourth streets downtown, bringing the city the same cutting-edge facility it got in 1970 when the current main library opened. Jeanne LoFranco was a 22-year-old clerk at the library when it opened April 20. The cost of construction: $4.7 million, a fraction of the $177.5 million needed to build its successor.

``It was just astounding,'' LoFranco said of the four-floor, 105,000-square-foot, imposing concrete building, an example of the Brutalist style of architecture. ``I remember everyone saying, `How am I ever going to find my way back to my desk?' It just seemed so huge at the time. . . . It was a very dramatic, modernistic building with all this lighting, very dramatic compared with the rest of downtown. It almost looked like a spaceship.''

It had more than double the amount of space it needed to house its book collection but had only a single electric typewriter. Now, patrons can access the library collection online, but the library, said LoFranco, who is now library circulation manager, is ``bursting at the seams.''

The new library, a joint facility between the city and San Jose State University, will be eight stories high with 475,000 square feet of space.

Library patrons said Monday that they enjoyed the comfort and accessibility of the old library -- it's located next to a light-rail station and near bus lines -- but won't really miss it much.

``I don't have any nostalgia about anything; I just adjust to what's coming up,'' said Charles Whitehead, a self-described ``elderly man'' who spends three days a week at the library, about four hours each time. ``But I spent many great days here.''

At a nearby table, Jervis Narag, 38, buried his head in a textbook titled ``Human Anatomy and Physiology.'' He was studying to take his dental licensure exam.

``I come here because it's so solemn; it's peaceful,'' he said. ``I can review my lessons and at the same time use the materials that are too expensive for me to buy.''

When the main library closed at 9 p.m., librarians made sure LoFranco, as the only employee who has worked there from Day One, would be the last to walk through the doors.

``I'm pretty sure I'll have a tear,'' she said in the building's waning hours. ``I'm not sad about leaving, but I am emotional.''

LoFranco said she's been hard at work planning the opening of the new library but doubts her career will span that building's existence.

``I'm old enough to retire but didn't want to'' yet, she said. ``I couldn't plan and work as hard on this as I have and not enjoy the fruits of that labor.''