A series of blog posts designed to give our readers a guided tour around the Dictionary.

 

The Dictionary of Sydney team thanks you for your support over the last year, and wishes you a happy and prosperous 2013! You can read more about the history of New Years Eve in Sydney in Hannah Forsyth's entry on the Dictionary, and the article below from the Australian Town &  Country Journal, 11 January 1902 - some things never change it seems!

The city streets were given up to the customary abandonment of joy and delirium of excitement on New Year's Eve. It seemed as though all the population had centred itself in George, King, and Pitt streets, the block from the G.P.O. to Market-street being one mass of struggling humanity. The crowd began to assemble early in the evening, and had assumed its largest proportions about ll o'clock. Long before this hour, the rowdy element had begun to get in its fine work. Regiments of small boys, playing large trumpets and other instruments, which gave forth the vilest of sounds, marched through the streets. Adults followed their example, and having exhausted their enthusiasm in that way, made for the footpaths again. The various arcades were, of course, densely crowded. Our illustration on page 21 depicts the crowd in the Strand, and is rather remarkable, as it is an example of instantaneous flashlight photography. The ordinary flashlight is done with a time exposure, but, as the crowd was in motion, this would have been impossible in the present case, and the picture had therefore to be taken instantaneously. Good-humored chaff was indulged in at the outset, but the rough portion of the crowd, fortified by the usual New Year potations, carried things much farther. It was their delight to block the foot paths, to hustl and finally "bonnet" inoffensive citizens, who were timorously avoiding them, to heave bags of flour at passers-by in the carriage way, and to generally make night hideous. For a time the stream of people would be pouring along the footpaths in the most orderly fashion, then there would be a series of rushes and some unfortunate would be seen fleeing as if for his life. This state of affairs was continued right up to midnight, when the ringing of bells, the roaring of voices, the blast of trumpets, and the screeching of the thousand and one noisemakers, made known the fact that 1902 had arrived. Then the restrained portion of the Swimming Carnival at Kiama on New Year's Day crowd joined with the rest, and abandon reigned supreme. Handshakings followed the compliments of the season were exchanged; some more fun had its play; then gradually the people melted away, and sought their homes to rest ere the enjoyment of the holiday began. Such was the scene in the streets at midnight: but a more solemn and reverential ceremony took place in the churches, where the customary watchnight services were held. There was a large congregation at St. Andrew's Cathedral, where the Archbishop preached. He gave the sermon a general appropriateness, taking no text. At midnight he paused, and the "Old Hundredth" was sung by the congregation. At St. Mary's Cathedral there was also a large congregation. It is interesting  to note that the custom of ringing out the old and ringing in the new year originated at the Cathedral on December 31, 1843. On that occasion a new peal of eight bells was used  for the first time. Seen from Balmain heights, as the midnight chimes rang at the General Post Office, the spectacle was a fine one, as no fewer than five huge bonfires, the materials of which had evidently been soaked with kerosene, suddenly shot up their flames from the city into the air, tinting the sky, and in comparison almost obscuring the moon. Meanwhile the whistles on all the ferry steamers were kept blowing, and continued the fearful noise for about fifteen minutes. The roaring and noise in town, though dimmed by the distance to a murmur, was plainly noticeable. In Balmain and suburbs things were generally very quiet, those most disposed to celebrate the dying of one year and the birth of another by noise having gone to the city to add to the pandemonium there.

As the year draws to a close, the Dictionary of Sydney Trust has had the sad task of farewelling two of our staff, Victoria Keighery and Emma Grahame. The Dictionary’s Executive Officer, Victoria Keighery, was crucial in overseeing the project’s shift from research project to operational organisation. The Dictionary of Sydney is one of the few ARC funded research projects that has managed to continue beyond its research phase; we have just reached the milestone of three years live. Vic set up systems, managed the board, and drew around her a happy team of staff, both paid and volunteer, who have tirelessly worked together to deliver the Dictionary’s content.

Emma Grahame joined the research project in its infancy back in May 2007. She has been the Dictionary’s editorial coordinator for over 5 years and has cast her discerning eye over all of the content you see in the Dictionary. Emma has been a powerhouse of activity. She has been the touchstone for our authors, guiding and editing their contributions. Not only has she ensured the Dictionary hit our one-millionth-word published, Emma also established our blog, which regularly highlights new content, recent discoveries, relevant events and provides a guided short-cut to accessing the Dictionary’s ever-growing content.

On behalf of the Trust, and all our stakeholders, we wish both Vic and Emma well in their new endeavours and thank them for their enthusiasm and commitment to the Dictionary over so many years. They have helped make the Dictionary what it is.    

In his entry on Kings Cross in the Dictionary, author Mark Dunn says that 'Kings Cross exists in Sydney's imagination as much as it does in any physical form'  and that is 'possibly the only suburb in Sydney that nearly everyone has visited and that everyone has an opinion on'. It's the inaugural Kings Cross Festival this week, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to wander about some of the different views of the area over time which are on the Dictionary of Sydney so far. Go on to the Dictionary itself for more, and be sure to head off to the Festival too!  

 

 

Our wonderful Executive Officer, Victoria Keighery, has decided to move on to bigger and better things, and we are going to miss her very much. We've been pretending it isn't going to happen, but we can't do that for too much longer.   So. We are looking for someone as fabulous, hardworking, inspiring and fun to be around as Vic has been, and we are advertising the position on ArtsHub as of today. Our budget doesn't allow for wider advertising, so it would be great if Dictionary readers could send this on to anyone in their networks who might be interested. The position is three days per week, and applications close on 7 December. The Duty Statement and Position Description can be found here.

The Dictionary's going green! In one of our exciting new projects, we’ve been lucky enough to work on a joint project to boost the amount of Irish history in the Dictionary, with the help of the Irish Consul-General, Caitriona Ingoldsby, and the Aisling Society. We hope to bring the project to fruition in the March 2013 update to the Dictionary. Sydney’s Irish community has been important from the beginning of European settlement, and retains a strong influence over Sydney’s culture and history. Writers from the Aisling Society and elsewhere are working on entries about Sydney’s Irish places, people and events, and these will go up into the Dictionary as part of the St Patrick’s Day festivities, in 2013. Already we've had a general essay on the Irish contribution to Sydney from 1788 to 1901 submitted by Richard Reid, who curated the National Museum's important exhibition 'Not Just Ned: a true history of the Irish in Australia'. We have also received a number of other pieces contributed by historians and members of the Aisling Society, and we are looking forward to getting them up and online in the near future.

'Audaciousville : the story of Dacey Garden Suburb, Australia's first public housing estate' by Samantha Sinnayah, City of Botany Bay Council

One of our authors and a great supporter of the project, Sam Sinnayah, has just published a book based on her wonderful exhibition about Daceyville, one of Sydney's most interesting suburbs. Sam is  curator at the George Hanna Museum, run by the City of Botany Bay Council, and curated an exhibition on Daceyville there in 2010. The book's called Audaciousville:the story of Dacey Garden Suburb, Australia's first public housing estate. Sam also wrote our entry on Daceyville and helped us find some of the great images we've illustrated it with. But her book is even more extraordinary -- with great images and fascinating detail about the origin of the Dacey Garden Suburb project, the different architects and designers, the architectural styles and the changes to plans forced by budget constraints and resistance by builders. Best of all are the photos and stories from residents of the suburb, both past and present, which illustrate the lived gap between planning and experience. Where the architects saw an innovative cul-de-sac design, the kids saw a good seculded place for fights. Where the garden designers saw iconic palm trees, the kids saw a source for bows and arrows.

Pages 18 & 19 of 'Audaciousville:Audaciousville : the story of Dacey Garden Suburb, Australia's first public housing estate'

The book was published with the assistance of a federal grant under the Your Community Heritage program, and is a very worthy result of that excellent program. You can read it online via Trove. If you'd like to get a copy, email museum@botanybay.nsw.gov.au for further details.

What could possibly be left to say about the navigation of the Dictionary of Sydney? There are a few things, which I'll wrap up into this final post in our series. Reading the Dictionary on the road

Did you know there is a mobile version of the Dictionary of Sydney? If you have a smart phone or tablet, you can see a version of the Dictionary which will adapt to the small screen size of your phone, and display the content in the Dictionary in a more suitable way. We are also working on a fully mobile version, which will incorporate the fact that your smart phone knows where you are to show you the Dictionary items that are near you in space. Part of this effort is directed at producing a capacity to mark trails through our material, that might correspond with real trails, such as walking tours, in the real city. This will be a very exciting breakthrough, and you can be sure we'll trumpet it when we make it there.   The Dictionary linking to the world The Dictionary is also part of an extensive and growing internet ecosystem. Our entries are included in the National Library's incomparable Trove, which has revolutionised historical research in a very short time.

We link out to a range of sites, from the Australian Dictionary of Biography and Trove, to Wikipedia and many others. External links to other sources can be found in the right hand column. We are working to include more external links to collections, source material, scholarship and great history sites. The Dictionary and Wikipedia

Did you read that correctly, that we link to Wikipedia? You certainly did. Wikipedia is one of the great new inventions of the internet age, and it's one we certainly try to work with as much as possible. Increasing numbers of Wikipedia articles use the Dictionary of Sydney as a trusted and authoritative source, and we hope that Wikipedia readers follow those citations to us to find more detailed content. Check out West Pymble in Wikipedia for an example of an article that's been greatly improved by using historical material from the Dictionary of Sydney. This can only benefit Wikipedia, the Dictionary and anyone interested in Sydney's history. We encourage Wikipedians, especially those in WikiProject Sydney, to use the Dictionary's content in their work, by providing the correct code to cite the Dictionary articles in each and every one. Click on the Cite This link on every entry page, and you'll find a popup that gives a range of ways to cite the Dictionary, including two formats for Wikipedia citations.   Sharing the Dictionary

Tell your friends! Or just save an entry to read later. At the bottom right hand side of every page in the Dictionary is a tab marked Share - from here you can select the social media option of your choice to share or bookmark whichever page you're on, whether that's an entry, a multimedia item, a subject heading, a map or a role.   Enjoy your explorations through the Dictionary, and beyond in the great world of history online. Come back and tell us what you find!     Other posts in this series: Finding your way through the Dictionary part 1 -- Entities Finding your way through the Dictionary part 2 -- Images Finding your way through the Dictionary part 3 -- Maps Finding your way through the Dictionary part 4 -- Contributors Finding your way through the Dictionary part 5 -- Demographics Finding your way through the Dictionary part 6 -- Roles Finding your way through the Dictionary part 7 -- Subjects Finding your way through the Dictionary part 8 -- Bonus extras

In this day and age, when Search is all important and everyone consults Professor Google at the first opportunity, the great virtues and pleasures of a Subject index are a little eclipsed. Not if you are a librarian, of course, or even if you are close to a librarian. They've never forgotten how a carefully constructed Subject listing can find you a range of things that keyword searching never could. We've taken that on board at the Dictionary and we are in the process of constructing, slowly but surely, a Subject index to the Dictionary's content. Let me show it to you. Be kind, because it is still being built, but I can indicate how great it is going to be one day. When you click Subjects in the Browse panel, and go to the Browse Subjects page, you'll see the usual blue listing of Entries. But if you click Sort by Name, up the top, you'll get an alphabetical listing. Click Aboriginal to see a Subject listing that has been pulled together to show the potential of this pathway into the Dictionary. The Aboriginal subject page aggregates all the content we think is relevant to this important area of Sydney's history, from pre-invasion to the present.

The listing shows entries, people, places, events and organisations, and will soon also include images and audio relevant to the topic. Most of our Subject headings are currently empty, as work continues on a myriad other tasks at the Dictionary. One of our volunteers, an eminent former librarian, is working on placing the images into the Subject listings, which will be a huge step forward.

There are broader and narrower subject terms in most topic areas, which will enable readers to move around in subject areas, finding everything that 's relevant to their area of interest. Each quarterly rebuild should see the Subject listings getting more and more useful, so have a look now and then to see how they've come on.                 Other posts in this series: Finding your way through the Dictionary part 1 -- Entities Finding your way through the Dictionary part 2 -- Images Finding your way through the Dictionary part 3 -- Maps Finding your way through the Dictionary part 4 -- Contributors Finding your way through the Dictionary part 5 -- Demographics Finding your way through the Dictionary part 6 -- Roles Finding your way through the Dictionary part 7 -- Subjects Finding your way through the Dictionary part 8 -- Bonus extras

There are more pathways into the Dictionary's content, although some of these are still under construction.

Browse Roles is one of these byways, giving you a different set of slices across the Dictionary's content. By its nature, browsing Roles is incomplete, and will not be comprehensive for a long time, if ever, but it's a great way to set off into the thickets of the Dictionary's more inaccessible regions.

Find and click on the Roles link, under the Browse listing on the right hand side of the front page. You'll be taken to a page which lists all the occupations we've used for people in the Dictionary, built up over the years as we've classified Sydneysiders by the thousand. Click on an occupation, and you are taken to a listing of the members of that calling currently included in the Dictionary. Some will have articles already, some will not.  Some roles are thickly populated (try Councillor, for example), and some only take you to one lonely exponent. All these categories are growing every time we rebuild the Dictionary.

Some are relatively complete, due to special effort on the part of our researchers, and provide a glimpse of how useful the Roles will be one day. Governor is one of those -- pulling data from the facts in each governor's entity listing, it provides a list of NSW governors, as well as some governors of other things, such as the Commonwealth of Australia, the Commonwealth Bank, and the Crown Street Women's Hospital. People in the Dictionary can have more than one Role, and if you look at the role Convict, and then click through to a few of the individuals listed there, you can see how widely varied their subsequent careers were. For many, being transported was a life-changing event that created chances they would never have had in the old country.

As I said earlier, this pathway into the Dictionary is still under construction, and you will find people  whose role information is incomplete, or even mistaken. If you do, please let us know -- we rely on our readers to help us make the Dictionary as complete and accurate as possible, and we greatly appreciate any help you can give us. Other posts in this series: Finding your way through the Dictionary part 1 -- Entities Finding your way through the Dictionary part 2 -- Images Finding your way through the Dictionary part 3 -- Maps Finding your way through the Dictionary part 4 -- Contributors Finding your way through the Dictionary part 5 -- Demographics Finding your way through the Dictionary part 6 -- Roles Finding your way through the Dictionary part 7 -- Subjects Finding your way through the Dictionary part 8 -- Bonus extras