The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.

Bouncing around the Dictionary

2011
What are those bouncing balls on our front page?
The Dictionary of Sydney's bouncing balls
The Dictionary's bouncing balls -- captured
They were designed to provide a visual rendering of the ways in which all the elements of content in the Dictionary of Sydney are connected and also to suggest to readers that the best way to proceed might be to jump in and bounce around. Because the Dictionary has no overview or introduction, and no claim to neat or even coverage, this is still the best approach. Our front page has a whole lot of routes into content, whether through the browse links on the right hand side, the featured content underneath the bouncing balls, or clicking on the bouncing balls themselves (which take you to the browse pages). Once you are looking at an entry or an entity, there are links galore. On the other hand, search is a far more risky proposition. While we do have over 500 articles, and over 4000 entities, the chances are, and will be for a while, that the thing you are looking for isn't there. And many of our readers are not searching for something specific, not at first anyway. They are just looking, browsing, noodling around Sydney's history. Bouncing into the content and then bouncing around by clicking on the links, connections and images could just be the best way to find what it is they might be looking for.
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