The modern Spence Wing entrance of the State Library of South Australia connects the Institute Building (1861, left) and the Mortlock Wing (1884, right)
The State Library of South Australia, or SLSA, formerly known as the Public Library of South Australia, located on North Terrace, Adelaide, is the official library of the Australian state of South Australia. It is the largest public research library in the state, with a collection focus on South Australian information, being the repository of all printed and audiovisual material published in the state, as required by legal deposit legislation. It holds the "South Australiana" collection, which documents South Australia from pre-European settlement to the present day, as well as general reference material in a wide range of formats, including digital, film, sound and video recordings, photographs, and microfiche. Home access to many journals, newspapers and other resources online is available.
On 29 August 1834, a couple of weeks after the passing of the South Australia Act 1834 by the British parliament,[1] a London-based group led by the Colonial Secretary, Robert Gouger, and solicitor Richard Hanson[2] and a number of prominent colonists, including Ernest Giles, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, John Morphett, Robert Torrens Snr, and John Hindmarsh, formed the South Australian Literary Association at the city's Adelphi Chambers.[3] Within a month, the title was changed to the more inclusive South Australian Literary and Scientific Association[1] with the aim of "the cultivation and diffusion of useful knowledge throughout the colony". Although the Association lapsed and meetings ceased,[3] a collection of books had been donated by members with the intention of becoming the basis of the new colony's library, and the colonists subsequently brought the collection to the Colony of South Australia aboard the Tam O'Shanter, which arrived on 18 December 1836.[2]
The first Adelaide Mechanics' Institute (based on the concept of mechanics' institutes developed in Scotland and England in the 1820s, to provide adult education to working men[4][5]) met on 23 June 1838, with the event reported by the Southern Australian newspaper. Running into difficulties, the organisation was merged with a revived Literary and Scientific Association, with the new name of the Adelaide Literary and Scientific Association and Mechanics' Institute, electing a committee in July 1839. Over this time, the membership of the association varied between upper-middle-class and lower-middle-class. The library reopened, but the Institute did not have a permanent location, and the focus was on a programme of lectures. However the lectures dwindled and attendances varied, as the Institute tried to function as an adult education institution as well as a learned scientific society, and its last meeting was held in June 1844.[1]
In September 1844, a group of men founded the South Australian Subscription Library, with a collection created by donation and subscriptions, and in 1845 it took over the collection of the Literary and Scientific Association and Mechanics' Institute. A permanent librarian was employed at this time, and the library served its middle-class members.[1]
In 1847, a new Adelaide Mechanics' Institute was founded, by a group of lower-middle class men, led by schoolteacher W.A. Cawthorne. Various talks, discussions and displays were put on.[1] This organisation merged with the South Australian Library in 1848, creating the Mechanics' Institute and South Australian Library, based in Peacock's Buildings, Hindley Street,[6] and with membership moving back to the upper-middle class.[1] Nathaniel Summers was appointed as the first librarian. It subsequently moved to Exchange Chambers, King William Street, but by 1855 had gone into decline.[6]
Meanwhile, other institutes and societies were established throughout the Adelaide suburbs, including the Adelaide Philosophical Society (which later evolved into the Royal Society of South Australia). Some of these institutes asked the government for financial assistance, and Unitarian publisher John Howard Clark suggested the conversion of the Institute into a public institution. A Bill was proposed in Parliament in 1854.[1] Between 1847 and 1856 another 13 mechanics' institutes started in other parts of the colony.[7][8]
In June 1856 the South Australian Legislative Council passed Act No. 16 of 1855–6, the South Australian Institute Act, which incorporated the South Australian Institute under the control of a Board of Governors,[9] to whose ownership all materials belonging to the old Library and Mechanics' Institute was immediately transferred. This Act also ensured the library would be open to the public free of charge, and granted funding was allocated to it. This made the library very popular particularly amongst artisans and workmen who filled it to capacity in the evenings. At this point it was a lending library, and held a large amount of fictional work.[6] The Act also provided for a museum as part of the new organisation.[9] The suburban institutes became subsidiaries of the SA Institute, as did the Adelaide Philosophical Society and the South Australian Society of Arts.[1]
As new books arrived from Britain, the library expanded and soon needed new accommodation, which was found in North Terrace in 1860.[6] The Adelaide Institute building opened in January 1861, and included rooms for the Adelaide Philosophical Society, the Medical Society and the Choral Society.[8]
The Copyright Act 1878, Part II section 15, required that a copy of every book published in South Australia was to be deposited in the Institute by a process known as legal deposit, for preservation of the books. (After Federation, the Copyright Act (1905) replaced the earlier state copyright legislation with regard to legal deposit, but the State Library continues to collect and preserve locally produced material.)[9]
The Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery Act 1884 renamed the South Australian Institute as Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery, and also broadened the scope of the Board's control to include the expanding network of regional and suburban institutes. It also created a new, independent body, the Adelaide Circulating Library, to take over the business of circulating books on a subscription basis.[9] It also became the location for university lectures.[8]
20th century
The next important piece of legislation affecting SLSA was the 1939 number 44 Libraries and Institutes Act, which repealed the Public library, Museum and Art Gallery and Institutes Act and separated the Public Library from the (newly named) Art Gallery of South Australia and South Australian Museum, established its own board and changed its name to the Public Library of South Australia. The new entity thus became a statutory corporation.[10][11]
Various reorganisations occurred through the years following, but the legislation still governing the Library is number 70 Libraries Act (1982), which repealed the Libraries and Institutes Act (1939–1979) and the Libraries (Subsidies) Act 1955–1977[9] (with the latest version as of July 2019[update] being 12 May 2011).[12][13]
During the 1990s, the Library became a Division under a series of departments, responsible to the Minister for the Arts. The State Records Act 1997 separated the responsibility for management and disposal of state government records, bringing this under a State Records Council rather than the Libraries Board.[9]
After the election of the Marshall government in March 2018, the post of Minister for the Arts ceased to exist, Arts South Australia (as Arts SA was now known) was dismantled and its functions transferred to direct oversight by the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Arts and Culture section.[14]
Geoff Strempel has been director of SLSA from around 2017, during which time he oversaw increased digital preservation. Before his appointment, he was associate director of the 140 public libraries in South Australia. In this position, he establishment of the One Card Network, linking all of the libraries and facilitating quick and efficient inter-library loans among the public libraries. He was awarded the HCL Anderson Award, the Australian Library and Information Association's highest honour, recognising his outstanding service. By late 2024, SLSA had digitised and uploaded around 2000 pages of newspapers to Trove, the National Library of Australia's website that allows free public access to a large amount of digitised historical documents. The library has also acquired over 100,000 images by renowned local aerial photographer Douglas Darian Smith, as well as film memorabilia from filmmaker Scott Hicks' personal archive. Strempel retires on 18 October 2024, but an exhibition of Hicks' items is already planned for 2025.[15]
Mortlock Wing
Mortlock Wing.Mortlock Wing interior, view to south
The building now known as the Mortlock Wing was opened on 18 December 1884 as a "Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery for the colony of South Australia" with 23,000 books and a staff of three. It had taken over 18 years to complete after the initial foundations were laid in 1866. (In 1873 the foundations of the western wing of a proposed new block were laid, but there the matter ended until 1876, when fresh plans were drawn, and another set of foundations put in. Again the work went no further until 1879 when the west wing was finally commenced. The earlier work was condemned, and had to be removed before the Public Library could be started.)[16] The foundation stone was laid on 7 November 1879 by Sir William Jervois and the building was constructed by Brown and Thompson at a total cost of £36,395, and opened in 1884.[17] Supervision for the board of directors was undertaken by secretary Robert Kay (1825–1904), later general director and secretary of the Public Library, Museum, and Art Gallery of South Australia.[citation needed]
The building is French Renaissance in style with a mansard roof. The walls are constructed of brick with Sydney freestone facings with decorations in the darker shade of Manoora stone.[citation needed]
The interior has two galleries, the first supported by masonry columns, and the second by cast iron brackets. The balconies feature wrought iron balustrading ornamented with gold while the glass-domed roof allows the chamber to be lit with natural light. Two of the original gas "sunburner" lamps survive in the office space located on the second floor at the southern end.
Restoration of the building occurred in 1985 as a Jubilee 150 project by Danvers Architects, consultant architect to the South Australian Department of Housing and Construction. The $1.5million project was jointly funded by the government and the community.[citation needed]
In honour of a substantial bequest from John Andrew Tennant Mortlock,[18] the Libraries Board of South Australia resolved that a percentage of the South Australiana Collections would be housed in the wing and named the Mortlock Library of South Australiana in 1986.
After the State Library underwent a substantial redevelopment, commencing in 2001 and reaching completion in 2004, the main chamber of the Mortlock Wing became an exhibition space providing a glimpse into the history and culture of South Australia.
In August 2014 the Mortlock Wing featured in a list of the top 20 most beautiful libraries of the world, compiled by the U.S. magazine Travel + Leisure.[19][20]
Collections
General reference collections
The general reference and research material in the State Library was named the Bray Reference Library in 1987 after former SA Chief Justice, Dr John Jefferson Bray, who served on the Libraries Board of South Australia from 1944 to 1987.
Heritage collections
The State Library has a national responsibility to collect, preserve and give access to historical and contemporary South Australian information. The South Australiana collections document South Australia from pre-white settlement to the present day, and the Northern Territory to 1911. The South Australiana collection is one of the most comprehensive in the world due to legal deposit requirements for published material, and through donations of unpublished material. A well known donation is the Bradman Collection of cricketing memorabilia.
The York Gate Library was acquired from the estate of Stephen William Silver, of S. W. Silver and Co. (William) a London-based company who not only sold clothing, furniture and equipment suitable for emigrants to the British Colonies, but also a series books providing relevant information for such emigrants. William had started to collect objects and books related to the areas to which their customers were migrating. These were kept in his residence at 3 York Gate, London and hence became known as the York Gate Library. When he died on 7 March 1905, the South Australia branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia raised the money to buy the collection of nearly 5,000 volumes and pamphlets so they could be brought to Australia.[21] In 2006, the centenary of the establishment of the library in Australia, the collection was threatened with eviction.[21]
Using items from its rare books collection, Keith Conlon gives a talk on the 200th anniversary of the death of Matthew Flinders, at the SLSA's Institute Building, 21 July 2014.
The State Library's rare books collection is the major collection of its kind in South Australia. It comprises Australian and international items which have been identified as having a special interest through subject matter or rarity.
Children's Literature Research Collection
The Children's Literature Research Collection was formed in 1959 and has over 65,000 books, periodicals, comics, board and table games, and toys. The collection has been enhanced by donations from South Australian individuals and families and from organisations. It is one of the State Library's heritage collections and is of international importance.
As a member library of National and State Libraries Australia, the organisation collaborated on the creation of the National edeposit (NED) system, which enables publishers from all over Australia to upload electronic publications as per the 2016 amendment to the Copyright Act 1968 and other regional legislation relating to legal deposit,[27] and makes these publications publicly accessible online (depending on access conditions) from anywhere via Trove.[28]
State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the world. It is also Australia's busiest public library and, as of 2023, the third busiest library globally.
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act 1960 for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people", thus functioning as a national library. It is located in Parkes, Canberra, ACT.
The State Library of Western Australia is a research, education, reference and public lending library located in the Perth Cultural Centre in Perth, Western Australia. It is a portfolio agency of the Western Australia Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, and facilitated by the Library Board of Western Australia.
The State Library of New South Wales, part of which is known as the Mitchell Library, is a large heritage-listed special collections, reference and research library open to the public and is one of the oldest libraries in Australia. Established in 1869 its collections date back to the Australian Subscription Library established in the colony of New South Wales in 1826. The library is located on the corner of Macquarie Street and Shakespeare Place, in the Sydney central business district adjacent to the Domain and the Royal Botanic Gardens, in the City of Sydney. The library is a member of the National and State Libraries Australia (NSLA) consortium.
North Terrace is one of the four terraces that bound the central business and residential district of Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia. It runs east–west along the northern edge of "the square mile". The western end continues on to Port Road and the eastern end continues across the Adelaide Parklands as Botanic Road.
The South Australian Museum is a natural history museum and research institution in Adelaide, South Australia, founded in 1856 and owned by the Government of South Australia. It occupies a complex of buildings on North Terrace in the cultural precinct of the Adelaide Parklands. Plans are under way to move much of its Australian Aboriginal cultural collection, into a new National Gallery for Aboriginal Art and Cultures.
The Adnyamathanha are a contemporarily formed grouping of several distinct Aboriginal Australian peoples of the northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia. The ethnonym Adnyamathanha was an alternative name for the Wailpi but the contemporary grouping also includes the Guyani, Jadliaura, Pilatapa and sometimes the Barngarla peoples. The origin of the name is in the words "adnya" ("rock") and "matha".
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of almost 45,000 works of art, making it the second largest state art collection in Australia. As part of North Terrace cultural precinct, the gallery is flanked by the South Australian Museum to the west and the University of Adelaide to the east.
Charles Pearcy Mountford OBE was an Australian anthropologist and photographer. He is known for his pioneering work on Indigenous Australians and his depictions and descriptions of their art. He also led the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land.
Nepabunna, also spelt Nipapanha, is a small community in the northern Flinders Ranges in north-eastern South Australia, about 600 kilometres (370 mi) north of Adelaide. It is located just west of the Gammon Ranges, and the traditional owners are the Adnyamathanha people.
Martindale Hall is a Georgian style mansion near Mintaro, South Australia which appeared in the film Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land remains one of the most significant, most ambitious and least understood expeditions. Commenced in February 1948, it was one of the largest scientific expeditions to have taken place in Australia and was conducted by a team of Australian and American researchers and support staff.
Sir William Dixson was an Australian businessman, collector and benefactor who bequeathed his collection of over 20,000 items of Australiana to the State Library of New South Wales, forming the Dixson Library. In recognition of his public benefactions, Dixson was knighted in the New Year Honours of 1939.
State Records of South Australia (SRSA) is the archives and records management authority for the Government of South Australia. It is responsible for storing, managing, protecting and providing access to the official records of the South Australian Government, as well as providing South Australian state and local government agencies with advice about records management, freedom of information and information privacy. State Records was established under the State Records Act 1997
William Herbert Ifould OBE was an Australian librarian and floriculturalist who was instrumental in the development of library services in New South Wales. He was the Principal Librarian at the Public Library of New South Wales from 1912 until his retirement in 1942.
John Andrew Tennant Mortlock was a pastoralist in South Australia, remembered as a major benefactor of the State Library of South Australia and commemorated by the "Mortlock Wing" of the library.
The South Australian Literary and Scientific Association, formerly the South Australian Literary Association and also known as the South Australian Literary Society, was active in London before the British colonisation of South Australia after its establishment on 29 August 1834. The Association played a part in the foundation of the South Australian Museum, the State Library of South Australia and the Royal Society of South Australia.
The History Trust of South Australia, sometimes referred to as History SA, was created as a statutory corporation by the History Trust of South Australia Act 1981, to safeguard South Australia’s heritage and to encourage research and public presentations of South Australian history. It operates three museums in the state: the Migration Museum, the National Motor Museum and the South Australian Maritime Museum. It runs the month-long South Australia's History Festival annually, and manages the Adelaidia and SA History Hub websites. It also manages, in collaboration with the State Library of South Australia, the Centre of Democracy.
Mechanics' institutes were a Victorian-era institution set up primarily to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects, to working-class men, which spread to the corners of the English-speaking world, including the Australian colonies, where they were set up in virtually every colony. In some places, notably throughout the colonies of Queensland and New South Wales, they were often known as schools of arts.
Ludwik Dutkiewicz was an Australian artist born in Poland. He was born in Stara Sil, Ukraine on 2 February 1921. He won the 1953 and 1954 Cornell Prize.
References
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cooper, Janet K. (June 1970). The Foundation of Culture in Adelaide: A Study of the First Colonists' Transplantation of Ideas and Art: 181836–1857 (MA). University of Adelaide. pp.2–30. hdl:2440/113377. PDF
↑ Kelly, Thomas (November 1952). "The Origin of Mechanics' Institutes". British Journal of Educational Studies. 1 (1). Society for Educational Studies: 17–27. doi:10.2307/3119430. JSTOR3119430.
1 2 3 4 "VII.—Educational". South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide, SA: 1858 – 1889). No.27 October. 1863. p.4.
↑ "About Institutes of SA"(Video). Institutes of South Australia. 16 September 2021. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
1 2 3 Hancock, Joelie (Winter–Spring 2021). "Beginnings of Institutes in South Australia". Useful Knowledge (55). Mechanics' Institute of Victoria: 20-21. Retrieved 3 January 2022– via Institutes Of South Australia.
↑ "An Important Institution". South Australian Register. Adelaide. 4 June 1898. p.5. Retrieved 4 May 2014– via National Library of Australia. This reference contains interesting details of the "cultural precinct" of North Terrace and list of chairmen of the Board of Governors to 1898.
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