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The University of Idaho Library's first home — in 1892 — was a single 14-by-18-foot classroom located in the original, then-new Administration Building (which was later destroyed by fire in 1906). The collection consisted initially of just 200 to 250 books — all of them gifts — but soon grew as more gifts were received and the university began buying books with money alotted from the Morrill Act funds. Little information exists about the library during its first 13 years because most of the early records were destroyed in the 1906 fire. But this was a formative period — it was during this time that the U.S. Government designated the library a depository of current government publications. And the State of Idaho sent the library an incomplete file of territorial and state documents.
By 1893 the library was receiving 27 journals and newspapers (all of them donations to the university by their publishers). These included popular national magazines like Harper's Weekly, Scribner's Magazine and Cosmopolitan; technical journals like Mining Age and Engineering and Mining Journal; and local newspapers like the Moscow Democrat, Nampa Leader and Idaho Falls Times. John E Bonebright, a recent graduate of Northwestern University, was hired in 1893 as an instructor in mathematics as well as "Librarian" of the university. During his tenure the collection grew to 3,000 books, 3,000 government documents, and 9,500 pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals by the mid-1890s. Besides the main library, the university also had departmental reading rooms, containing technical reference books.
After Bonebright switched to full-time teaching in 1896, Stella Maud Allen (one of the first graduates of the university) was appointed "Assistant Librarian and Instructor of Science." She created a card catalog using the Dewey Decimal System. During this time, use of the library increased and its hours expanded beyond weekdays to include Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. The University Argonaut noted in January 1899:
New rules in 1899 allowed students to take books out — provided they left a refundable deposit for each book. Allen resigned at the end of '99 to marry (moving to Colfax, WA, with her husband) and was succeeded by Margaret B. McCallie — another UI grad — as University Librarian.
McCallie resigned in October 1905 to continue her graduate work in Chicago. Next: Trial by Fire
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his
is the story of one library's struggle for recognition and adequate resources
— a timeless struggle facing many, if not most, libraries throughout
the world. Ever since universities first emerged out of the teaching
efforts of Europe's medieval churches, books have been central to the
university enterprise. But when the University of Idaho first emerged
as the new state's land-grant university in the late 1880s, resources
of all kinds were scarce. 
The
library soon grew to include a second, adjacent room — a reading
room, to augment the original room which housed the collection. McCallie
also added a rack designed for magazines and newspapers, and began cross-cataloging
the collection with subject headings.