UNLV’s first dedicated library — the Dickinson Library — was distinctive for its round shape.
“Librarian [Jerry Dye] decided it would be a unique [building shape] for a campus out here," said the late Billie Mae Polson, a longtime librarian. Staff liked that they could keep an eye on things from the central desk, she continued. Alas, “the arrangement in the round building would have been wonderful had growth not taken place.”
In 1990, UNLV received a scathing assessment of the facility. An accreditation team sent by Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges made it clear that the Dickinson Library, despite expansions from a single story to three stories, was woefully inadequate.
“It is impossible to assess library resources without recognizing the physical facility that is currently available to the library as a major detriment to delivery of services and programs,” the report stated. It went on to note that UNLV’s growth in students and its ambitions to rise as a research institution “mandate that a larger and better planned facility will be needed.”
And with that, a new library rose to the top for UNLV’s capital project requests from the Nevada Legislature.
In 1993, the Nevada Public Works Board funded a feasibility study by the local architecture firm Wells-Pugsley, and Leo A. Daly, a national library design firm from Omaha, Nebraska. And the following year, the UNLV Foundation secured a $10 million gift from the Lied Foundation Trust, through its sole trustee, Christina M. Hixson. In the 1995 Legislative session, $3 million was appropriated for the design phase of a new library, and Welles-Pugsley and Leo A. Daly were retained to develop the schematic design.
Conceived as a soaring architectural statement, the library’s interior would be dominated by an open atrium filled with light and glass. The architectural design was completed in April 1996, and Fielden and Partners, a Las Vegas interior design firm, joined the project.
Hixson approved an additional $5 million from the Lied Foundation to help with the project's rising costs. The Board of Regents put their stamp on the project and the new building was officially named the Lied Library. The Legislature quickly approved a $42 million funding request and Tibesar Construction Co. broke ground on March 26, 1998.
On Dec. 16, 2000, the James R. Dickinson Library closed (and was repurposed as home to the Williams S. Boyd School of Law) and during the Christmas break the collections themselves were moved.
Lied Library was officially opened to the public by then-President Carol C. Harter and Library Dean Kenneth Marks on Jan. 8, 2001, at a final cost of $55.3 million. At the time, Lied Library was the largest State of Nevada facility. Harter liked to remind audiences of the symbolism behind Lied Library being at least “one square foot larger” than the Thomas & Mack Center, the university’s iconic basketball arena. (Later expansions to the T&M Center eventually made this quip no longer true.)
The library would become an iconic academic building, the most important building on the campus, and truly the center of the university.
“A library becomes the heart of a university when students feel it is theirs,” says Maggie Farrell, dean of University Libraries. “For 25 years, Lied Library has been that place at UNLV, and we look forward to continuing to serve, inspire, and support our students for decades to come.”
This article, by former UNLV Special Collections & Archives Director Peter Michel, was condensed from an “Lied Turns 25: Building the Heart of UNLV” exhibition on display on the first floor of Lied Library through the spring 2026 semester.
