The South Australian Institute (SAI) had its origins in the South Australian Literary and Scientific Association (1834) and the Adelaide Mechanics Institute (1838). After various institutional amalgamations, a government bill was passed to establish the Institute in 1856. The Institute building opened in 1861. The Institute library was a public library in the sense that there was a reference section and reading room open to the general public, but borrowing rights were conferred by subscription. Reference books, state papers, and bound newspapers did not circulate except on special application.
Printed by the South Australian government printer William Caddy Cox, this catalogue is a reissue of an original printed catalogue of 1861 along with a small supplementary catalogue of 1863, not to be confused with a larger printed supplementary catalogue of 1863. The catalogue has an inscription on the title page dated 1866. The catalogue contains some idiosyncrasies: on some occasions books within larger collected volumes are listed as separate titles; at other times, they are not. The size of books is not always given with strict technical accuracy.
Arranged primarily alphabetically by author, the catalogue is divided into 20 classes. Novels are by far the largest category in the collection, amounting to a third of the library’s holdings, but the catalogue also suggests an attempt to build a serious reference collection. Not including duplicates or alternative editions of the same title, the collection holds approximately 4,054 titles including: moral philosophy (96); jurisprudence and political economy (77); history (323); biography (arranged according to subject of the biography) (209); geography and travels (474); geology (32); chemistry (26); zoology (52); botany (38); anatomy and medicine (33); mathematics and natural philosophy (119); arts and manufactures (83); novels and prose works of fiction (1,357); poetry and drama (112); general literature (such as essays, criticism, and correspondence) (618); Latin and Greek literature (2); German literature (53); French and other modern languages (66); bound periodicals (54); and encyclopedias and works of reference (divided into groups according to subject) (230).
Not including duplicates or alternative editions, the small 1863 supplement appended to the catalogue contains the following additional numbers of titles: zoology (1); botany (38); anatomy and medicine (1); mathematics and natural philosophy (5); arts and manufactures (1); novels and prose works of fiction (29); poetry and drama (1); and general literature (6).
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