This is the fifth known printed catalogue of the Tasmanian Parliamentary Library, all of which were printed by the government printer James Barnard in the 1860s. With the date of 1 January 1869 on the title page, this catalogue appeared less than two years after the immediate previous catalogue. The preliminaries include a list of the rules and regulations of the parliamentary library, and an index to the general subject headings used in the catalogue. At the end of the catalogue there is an appendix listing a small number of donations to the library.
The classified catalogues of the Tasmanian Parliamentary Library are not consistent in their arrangement, and this catalogue also employs a different form to its predecessors. The catalogue is arranged as an alphabetical list by author (or sometimes title), with the general subjects interspersed through the list—the titles listed under subjects are indented and printed in smaller type. The catalogue is printed in double-column format, separated by a vertical line. Bibliographical details are sparse: the number of volumes for particular titles are given, but no other publishing information, and each work is assigned a catalogue number. 46 subject headings are flagged in the index at the start of the catalogue:
Agriculture; Almanacs; Architecture; Arts and Sciences; Atlases and Maps; Banking and Currency; Biography; Blue Books of British Parliament; Charities; Classics; Colonies; Dictionaries; Dramatic Works; Ecclesiastical; Education; Elections; Emigration and Immigration; Finance and Currency; Geology; History; Ireland; Labour; Law; Legal and Judicial; Lunacy; Magazine and Reviews; Miscellaneous; Natural History; Newspapers; Parliament; Politics; Poor Laws; Prisons; Public Works; Railways; Records; Salmon; Sanitary; Shipping; Slavery; Speeches; Statistics; Trade and Commerce; University Calendars; Voyages and Travels.
Not all of these were used, however; the subject of ‘Salmon’—an important local industry in Tasmania—appears to have been covered by a single book. The breadth of subjects in the collection shows the intention to create a broad-ranging resource to inform political debate and support government administration. The classics section—swelled by 147 volumes of A. J. Valpy’s Delphin Classics—is one of the biggest subject areas, along with History, Biography and Correspondence, and Law.
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