William Kane attended Holy Family School and Saint Ignatius College before entering the Society of Jesus in 1898. He was a member of the faculty at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, when he entered military service on January 11, 1918, and was commissioned U.S. Army Chaplain. While serving in France during World War I, he became a lifetime friend of Major Harry S Truman, who would one day become President of the United States. In 1930 Kane was named University Librarian at Loyola University in Chicago, a position he retained until his death in 1946. While University Librarian, Father Kane established the Jesuitca and Napoleonica collections at the library and created an archival collection documenting the history of Loyola University, Jesuit history, and local (Chicago) Catholic history.