The Opening:

Love Memorial Library opened to students and faculty in September 1945. The details of the new library’s layout was enunciated to students for the first time in an article in the Daily Nebraskan on September 19: “The building contains six reading rooms, four of which are to be devoted to related groups of subjects and will house selected books, periodicals, and pamphlets” (“Love Library Doors Swing Open At Last”).

These four groups of subjects included “reading rooms” in the Humanities, Social Studies, Science and Technology, and Education. The latter two of these rooms were not opened until the following year; the materials bound for Science and Technology and Education were temporarily housed in the existing open reading rooms. Finally, the third floor of the Library served students “interested in economics, business, history and geography, political and military science, sociology, psychology and social work” (Ibid). 

Love Memorial Library was meant to inhabit a larger role in the academic and University community beyond serving as a repository for books and other printed media. The opening of the Library was, in fact, an important step forward in the University’s postwar transition into a research institution.

A Symbol of Research:

At the dedication ceremony of the library in October 1947, Chancellor Gustavson said, “To me the library is the very citadel of democracy.” Love Library’s first Director, Frank A. Lundy, said at the ceremony, “The gauge of a university of the first rank is its library” (Daily Nebraskan, October 7, 1947). 

During Chancellor Gustavson’s time at the University in the 1950s, an obvious emphasis on evolving into a research institution became apparent. Funding from the federal government and private businesses provided the means for the University to focus on increased “graduate work and research by the regents, chancellor, and the faculty” (Sawyer 188). Previously, the state funding granted to the University was unable to support extensive research. The sciences were given the largest chunk of funding. In 1953, the University board of regents gave Graduate Dean Robert W. Gross the role of “research administrator.”

This table reflects the amount of funding the University received for research in the decade between 1949 and 1959. The increases are dramatic:

1949 – 50                    $131,446

1950 – 51                    $302,210

1951 – 52                    $423,773

1952 – 53                    $343,773

1953 – 54                    $403,043

1954 – 55                    $542,127

1955 – 56                    $709,627

1956 – 57                    $838,415

1957 – 58                    $1,468,140

1958 – 59                    $1,711,000

Source: Lincoln Star, May 14, 1958, p.16.