The collection consists of all the earliest documents that bear witness to the extent and contents of the lyceum library up to 1803. These documents are: inventories of books saved from the burned-down Jesuit college in Ljubljana, inventories of books from disbanded monasteries, whose collections were in part handed over to the newly-founded library at the Ljubljana lyceum (i. e. two Cistercian monasteries in Stična and Kostanjevica, Carthusian monastery in Bistra, monasteries of discalced and shod Augustinians in Ljubljana, and the Servite monastery in Duino). These documents are joined by catalogues of the Society for Agriculture and Useful Arts of Kranjska, disbanded in 1787, inventories of the earliest donations (of Karel Peer, Inocenc Taufferer and the Schilling's canonry), Terpin's catalogue of the diocesan library in Gornji Grad, whose collection was handed over to the lyceum library on the basis of a decree by the Governorate of Styria, and an inventory of duplicates that the lyceum library sold at auction in 1794. The collection is completed by the library inventory list from 1788 and the earliest catalogue from 1803, both compiled by the first lyceum librarian, Franz Wilde.