The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.
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The Dictionary is the sum of contributions by authors (over 150 of them so far), artists (photographers and painters mostly, so far), institutions (many of them national treasures), and companies such as Airview who have kindly allowed us to use…
Old stagers
One of the strengths of the Dictionary is our wide and varied coverage of Sydney's theatre history. Much of this can be credited to an indefatigable contributor, Ailsa McPherson. Ailsa's survey article outlines the history of theatrical production in Sydney…
Newsletter circus crossword
Mark St Leon, Circus The Australian Story Download the newsletter circus crossword here…
Red letter days
Celebrations, rituals and ceremonies have always been important parts of life in this place, even before it was called Sydney. The many carvings, clearings, and ceremonial sites in the Sydney basin show that the Aboriginal people had a full calendar of…
Uncovering treasure
Have you discovered Trove yet? It is the National Library's well-named unified search service, which combs a huge range of Australian collections all at once. Here at the Dictionary of Sydney we use it every day, especially the Digitised newspapers collection which…
More than the sum of the parts
Local history, city history, regional history, national history and global history all have different concerns and tend to have varying depths of field -- details which are crucial in one area are not so crucial in another. Because no historian…
I feel the earth move, under my feet
It isn't all facts and figures, or straightforward historical topics, here at the Dictionary of Sydney. We've also invited some very imaginative writers to come up with different viewpoints on the city's history, and they have obliged us. Ground level graffiti…
Building communities
One of most important tasks of the Dictionary is to document the histories of Sydney's many different cultural communities, and we've made a good start. The most recent community articles, on the Maori and the Russians, have just been released, and…
Getting technical
Technical education is all important today, and it's hard to imagine a time when it needed advocates and activists. With the generous help of the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts who sponsored their research for the Dictionary during 2009 and 2010,…
The circus is in town!
One of the most exciting entries in the new batch of material just added to the Dictionary of Sydney is Mark St Leon's richly illustrated essay on Circus in Sydney. The three St Leon brothers, Reg, Cass and Syl, with Mo…