No admission records are held by the State Library of South Australia. Admission and discharge records for Public Hospitals could be with the Hospital itself or may have been deposited with State Records of South Australia, the official repository for records of South Australian Government departments and agencies.
State Records has made some of the indexes to early records available on microfiche at the State Library; Adelaide Hospital admissions 1840-1853 and the index to the Destitute Asylum Admissions registers 1851-1896 (these may contain information about the health, birth, and death detail of inmates.)
For more details of records held at State Records see Ancestors in archives: a guide to family history sources in the official records of South Australia, 2000, or search their online catalogue, ArchivesSearch.
District Council institutions
Where hospitals or nursing homes are attached to local councils, their records would also be classed as government records, so may be held by State Records, but decisions on retention may rest with the Council concerned and so it may be necessary to contact the managers or the local council with enquiries about access.
No records of privately operated hospitals or nursing homes in South Australia are held by the Library. The Private Hospitals Association stated in 1996 that active records for the past seven years are required to be kept by the Hospital itself; and inactive files may be preserved - but no central repository for such records exists.
Sands & MacDougall directories are useful for establishing the address of private hospitals and nursing homes (up to 1973) and may also give the name of staff, such as the matron.
Published local histories, and local history collections, may also have information regarding home locations.