If you're interested in the math behind the library, you can't do better than this book: http://www.amazon.com/Unimaginable-Mathematics-Borges-Librar...

In the short story "Tlön, Uqbar, and the Orbis Tertius," Borges writes about a short discussion of base 12, which he calls (at least in translation) duodecimal. This is interwoven with a discussion of the 1001 nights, which I found odd, so I wondered what 1001 base 12 was.

It turns out to be a rather unremarkable number: 1729.

Given the time that the story was published, it is possible that Borges, who was fascinated by mathematics and always encoding maths concepts into his stories, had read the anecdote about the Hardy-Ramanujan number, and hid it purposefully in the story.

Edit: anyone interested in reading more about how Borges incorporated mathematics into his stories might find this book worthwhile

http://www.amazon.com/Unimaginable-Mathematics-Borges-Librar...