This is the first in a series of posts designed to give our readers a bit of a guided tour around the Dictionary, and to help readers get more out of the site. There's a lot more in there than you may think. First up -- entries and entities

The Browse bar -- on the right of the front page.

All our readers are aware of the great articles we've published, written by over 170 different volunteer authors and now amounting to over 1 million words in total. They range in topic from the most general to the closely focussed, and can be found all together through the Entries browse, available on the front page.

But there are lots of other browse options in that yellow box, and each of them leads you into a different slice of the Dictionary's data, including Maps, Multimedia, Contributors and (under construction) Subjects. The 8 blue icons at the top provide ways into the other kind of information the Dictionary has prepared -- the 'entities'.

Every time an author mentions an artefact, building, event, natural feature, organisation, person, place or structure in an entry, a link to that item  is created by Dictionary staff. If there's no item already in the Dictionary to link to, we create that as well, and go researching to check the name, find relevant dates, make any other connections we can, and provide enough facts to give a short description and outline to the item. We often add an image, a geographical reference or an alternate name as well. Sometimes we add a link to a well-known external site, such as the Australian Dictionary of Biography. And of course, we search the Dictionary itself, to check if there are any other references to this item that we've overlooked up to now. All links are made and checked by hand. There are now nearly 10,000 of these entities in the Dictionary, and over 20,000 links to them and they are gradually forming a network that connects all the entries. Each entity page collects all the information we have about an entity, along with all the mentions of that entity in entries, any images we have, and (when we get them all finished) any subject connections we are able to make.

How about an example?

Maybanke Anderson, in the Dictionary of Sydney

Here's the entity page for Maybanke Anderson, feminist and educationist. The top half shows her description, picture, timeline, names and vital statistics. The right hand column links to an entry about her, pictures of her, and the mentions of her in entries on Dulwich Hill, Hunters Hill and Norman Selfe (who was her brother). These links take you directly to the section of the article where Maybanke is mentioned, rather than to the top of the entry.

Below the fold (which means you need to scroll down to see) are her relationships, with spouses and family, her occupations, and specific positions she held.

All those blue links go to other entities, whether people or organisations, with connections of their own. Scroll over them, and you'll get a popup telling you something about the linked entity. You can see Norman Selfe's popup in that screenshot.

There's also the beginning of Jan Roberts's excellent article about Maybanke Anderson, and the other image we have of her.

This means you don't have to read reams of text to get around the Dictionary (although you can if you like!). All the entities are connected independently, and you can jump directly from one to the other using the links on entity pages. Thousands of our entities do not yet have entries about them, but that doesn't mean we know nothing about them. And more connections are being made all the time here at Dictionary HQ.

You'll come across some intriguing connections bouncing round the Dictionary in this fashion, and some of them will be new to you, and even to our authors. It's a good way to get a feeling for the complexity and the layers of the Dictionary, and of Sydney's history.

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

City of Sydney Council debated the continued funding of the Dictionary of Sydney at Council's meeting on Monday night.  After discussion, Council resolved to re-affirm the decision made in June 2011 to fund the Dictionary for a five-year period, and to release the funds for 2012-13 financial year, an amount of $200,000. The resolution recognised the Dictionary of Sydney as “a unique initiative of freely available, authenticated historical information about Sydney” and recorded Council’s visionary leadership in supporting the development of this public history project. This unanimous decision by Council will enable the Dictionary, which was close to the end of its operational funds, to continue its work, including coordinating a Federally funded project on the history of the Cooks River, and to ramp up a further fundraising effort to ensure its future. We will be working closely and cooperatively with City staff to create workable goals for the next year, and to meet them. If the City funding had not been made available the Dictionary would have closed its operations in August 2012, losing its staff, and ending the preparation of new material for publication. The possible closure of the project galvanised Dictionary contributors, users and members of the history community. Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP, Councillors, and City of Sydney staff received emails and letters from around Australia and across the world, urging continued support for the Dictionary and emphasising the importance of keeping this project alive. Councillor Phillip Black, who has been a founding Board member of the Dictionary,  was delighted with the outcome: "The Dictionary is a groundbreaking project which brings credit on the City, and will become an integral part of Sydney's cultural landscape. It's vital that we enable it to survive through these difficult early years." Councillor Black thanked the Lord Mayor and other councillors who voted for the measure, saying "the project is evidence of their commitment to an innovative, sustainable city, using technology to project its history and culture to the wider world." Associate Professor of History at UNSW, and author of The Colony, Grace Karskens was also pleased that the project will now continue. "It's a link between academic, amateur and professional historians, between local and family history and citywide themes. Hundreds of volunteers have contributed, and now their work will continue to grow". The Dictionary would like to thank all of our supporters who lobbied Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP, Councillors, and the City of Sydney.  We are very proud to have such passionate advocates and that the Dictionary is so highly regarded. Your support made all the difference, in reminding the Council what an important project they have fostered and helped build over the last five years, and urging them to carry it forward. Many individual contributors, volunteers, readers and enthusiasts wrote to the Councillors, and we were also heartened by the support of Wikimedia Australia, who sent a strongly worded letter. Many tweets and posts of support on other blogs have made us feel like valued members of the online history community, and that will certainly strengthen the project in the future. We would also like to thank those generous supporters who took this occasion to donate to the Dictionary. Without your financial as well as moral support this innovative project would not be possible. So now Dictionary staff can get back to commissioning, editing, linking, researching, illustrating and coordinating the work of our brilliant volunteer authors, as well as fundraising, marketing and administering! We'll be doing our best to help the Dictionary grow and consolidate, but all ideas and suggestions are very gratefully received, so if you have thoughts, please comment or get in touch.

The City of Sydney Council meets tonight, so there's still time to email or call (details below) and congratulate them on their support of the Dictionary of Sydney thusfar, and to urge them to release the full set of funds voted in 2011 so that the valuable work of the Dictionary can continue. Releasing part of the money as proposed by the City this week only puts off the inevitable and will only allow the Dictionary to continue operating until October. The Dictionary of Sydney Trust seeks the City's support of its short-term financial sustainability for the next twelve months and for the following two years in order to give it the stability and the space to work consistently on developing new partnerships that will support its long-term sustainability. The Dictionary of Sydney team would like to thank everybody who has already contacted the Council and those who have sent us messages of encouragement and support. It is great to know the Dictionary is so widely and warmly regarded. Express your support for the project by writing TODAY to: Clover Moore MP, Lord Mayor of Sydney Tel: 02 9265 9229 Email: cmoore@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Monica Barone, CEO City of Sydney Email: mbarone@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au and the current councillors of the City of Sydney: Phillip Black Tel: 02 9246 7719 Email: pblack@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au John McInerney Tel: 02 9265 9706 Email: jmcinerney@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Di Tornai Tel: 02 9265 9836 Email: dtornai@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Robert Kok Tel: 02 9265 9966 Email: rkok@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Chris Harris Tel: 02 9265 9678 Email: charris@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Irene Doutney Tel: 02 9265 9700 Email: idoutney@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Meredith Burgmann Tel: 02 9265 9515 Email: mburgmann@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Shayne Mallard Tel: 02 9265 9148 Email: smallard@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au A financial contribution towards the Dictionary's work is another tangible expression of support. Thank you to those who have donated in the past week. Please consider making a donation today to keep the Dictionary operating. All donations are tax deductible, and can be made by using the Everyday Hero site or sending a cheque, made payable to the Dictionary of Sydney Trust and sent to: Attention:  Victoria Keighery Dictionary of Sydney Trust GPO Box 1591 Sydney NSW 2001  

The Olympics are upon us again, and will have an echo in Sydney, despite being at the other end of the world this year. Sydneysiders have always loved their sports, from the first boxing matches, cockfights and horse races  in Hyde Park, to the triumphant and exciting Sydney Olympics of 2000. Our Sport article, by Richard Cashman, brings together the many different sports that have exercised the city's muscles and emotions over the years. But Sydney's Olympic effort of 2000 was not the first major international event to be held in the city. The 1938 Empire games brought athletes from all over the British Empire to Sydney, in what was to be the last big international sporting event for a decade. Before that, international Davis cup ties, and world championship rowing races drew huge crowds. Sydney's Olympics still stir fond memories in many Sydneysiders, and some of those have been captured by the City of Sydney's oral history program and made available on their website. Have a listen and get ready for the London event!  For those seeking the genuine thrill of mass sport watching, there will be a big screen in Customs House square, from 27 July to 13 August.

  The Dictionary of Sydney is under serious threat. Despite our long and productive relationship with the City of Sydney, and the support of Council, the City is considering withholding the 2012 -13  tranche of the five-year funding voted to the Dictionary by Council in May of 2011. The matter may be debated at the next City Council meeting on Monday 30 July 2012. In the current difficult economic climate, we have not managed to raise more than $30,000 in external funding and donations during 2011-12, and it will take more time for the Dictionary to be successful in attracting philanthropic funding. The $200,000 voted in principle by the Council for the Dictionary for 2012-13 is the bare minimum that will enable the project to continue, while we ramp up a further fundraising effort and shift our business model. Staff hours were cut in half in January 2012, and operations have been continuing on the basis of skeleton staff and goodwill. Despite this, the majority of the Council's key performance indicators have been met, and the Dictionary has continued to publish and to seek partnerships with other organisations. If the City funding is not made available the Dictionary will close its operations in August of this year, meaning it will lose its staff, and cease preparing new material for publication. This will mean that our current projects, including the Federally-funded Cooks River project, will cease, and material currently in preparation will be mothballed.  Starting the Dictionary up again will be both difficult and expensive. We need you to tell the Council now how important it is to keep funding the Dictionary at this critical stage in our development. It is unreasonable of the Council to cease funding the Dictionary without prior warning and two years into a five year agreement when the Dictionary: a) has met 80% of an extensive list of KPIs, b) has managed within its budget; c) is growing in content, participants, followers, status and profile; d) is actively seeking other sources of funding and other ways of attracting revenues; and e) when immediate cessation of funding would almost certainly destroy everything that has been built up with Council support over so many years. Council should recognise the Dictionary’s extraordinary achievements to date and agree to continue funding at the same level for 2012/13. The Dictionary of Sydney has been live less than 3 years and it would be a great shame to see this outstanding collaborative digital history project fold. Please help us save this groundbreaking, internationally acclaimed digital history project. You can do this in 2 simple ways: 1. Make a donation to the Dictionary now: http://www.everydayhero.com.au/dictionaryofsydney 2. Lobby the City of Sydney Council now. A template for letters and contact emails is available here. Remember: this issue may be debated by Council on Monday 30 July so we need your support now! Please forward this information to interested colleagues and friends - we want the Dictionary to survive and thrive. Apologies for cross-postings; we are keen to get the word out there. On behalf of the Board, staff and hundreds of volunteers involved in the Dictionary, we thank you in advance for your support of the project.

The Dictionary of Sydney is under serious threat and needs your support. Despite our long and productive relationship with the City of Sydney, and the support of Council, the City is considering withholding the 2012 -13  tranche of the five-year funding voted to the Dictionary by Council in May of 2011. If the City funding is not made available the Dictionary will close its operations in August of this year, meaning it will lose its staff, and cease preparing new material for publication. We need your support to tell the Council that the Dictionary is a worthwhile project and you don't want to see it die. Council may be considering this issue at the forthcoming Council meeting on Monday 30 July. More information about the current funding crisis will be posted shortly. Below is a template for a letter of support you can use to email or write to the Council. Letter of support: I write to express my concern about the Dictionary of Sydney’s imminent closure due to the City’s delays in releasing sponsorship funds. The Dictionary of Sydney is a highly successful collaborative digital history project connecting academic, public and community history. It is groundbreaking, internationally acclaimed, and is the envy of other capital cities. The Dictionary provides valuable cultural resources for Sydneysiders and the wider community. I am a writer / contributor / supporter to the Dictionary. The Dictionary engages with hundreds of volunteer authors who willingly contribute their expertise and knowledge to write content for the Dictionary. Over 670 articles have been published to date with another 220 in the pipeline. It is used by secondary and tertiary educators as a teaching resource and by students as a reliable and citable source for research and inquiry. I use it to / I read it  / I share it …. [insert how you use, support and/or value the project] It is unreasonable of the Council to cease funding the Dictionary without prior warning and two years into a five year agreement when the Dictionary: a)      has met 80% of an extensive list of KPIs, b)      has managed within its budget; c)      is growing in content, participants, followers, status and profile; d)      is actively seeking other sources of funding and other ways of attracting revenues; and e)      when immediate cessation of funding would almost certainly destroy everything that has been built up with Council support over so many years. Council should recognise the Dictionary’s extraordinary achievements to date and agree to continue funding at the same level for 2012/13. It would be a great shame to see this outstanding collaborative digital history project fold. Express your support for the project by writing this week to: Clover Moore MP, Lord Mayor of Sydney Tel: 02 9265 9229 Email: cmoore@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Monica Barone, CEO City of Sydney Email: mbarone@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au and the current councillors of the City of Sydney: Phillip Black Tel: 02 9246 7719 Email: pblack@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au John McInerney Tel: 02 9265 9706 Email: jmcinerney@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Di Tornai Tel: 02 9265 9836 Email: dtornai@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Robert Kok Tel: 02 9265 9966 Email: rkok@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Chris Harris Tel: 02 9265 9678 Email: charris@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Irene Doutney Tel: 02 9265 9700 Email: idoutney@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Meredith Burgmann Tel: 02 9265 9515 Email: mburgmann@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Shayne Mallard Tel: 02 9265 9148 Email: smallard@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au Hard copy letters can be mailed to: Council of the City of Sydney, GPO Box 1591, Sydney NSW 2001

Histories of Sydney that have emphasised peaceful settlement on the one hand, or violent dispossession on the other, have all tended to obscure the fact that Aboriginal people stayed in this place, and survived, adapting to the new conditions in which they found themselves, as people do. The Dictionary has been pleased to publish some accounts of the continuity of Aboriginal life in Sydney, including Peter Read's pieces on Narrabeen Lagoon and Biddy Lewis. We also have Keith Vincent Smith's article on the Aboriginal camps around Sydney harbour where people continued to live on their country well into the nineteenth century. Keith's work is well known, and he has again painstakingly excavated the sources for hidden details, piecing them together like a puzzle. We look forward to new work from Keith on Sydney's clans, to be published in the Dictionary later this year. You can find all the articles Keith has contributed so far here. Most are about individual people from the early contact period, giving a real insight into what it must have been like to have the world turned upside down. And soon, in our next batch of material, we will have a long article by Val Attenbrow of the Australian Museum, on the archaeological evidence of Aboriginal life in Sydney for hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived. John Maynard's essay on Aboriginal politics to 1945 takes us through the turbulent years of Aboriginal activism during the early 20th century, which culminated in events like the Day of Mourning in 1938.  Important organisations such as the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association and the Aborigines Progressive Association have their own short entries.

George Morgan's work on Aboriginal people's movement through the city is outlined in his article on Aboriginal migration to Sydney since World War II, which have given some areas, such as Redfern and La Perouse, such strong and diverse Indigenous communities. And we have a range of shorter pieces on important Aboriginal organisations formed during the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, including the FCAATSI, the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs, Aboriginal Medical Service, Aboriginal Legal Service, Aboriginal Housing Company, Black Theatre and the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre. Heidi Norman has written for us on more recent Aboriginal history in Sydney -- the development of the Aboriginal football competition, and the clubs that support it, which are part of the rich twentieth century heritage of Aboriginal organisation and activism. It's a great story. Sydney's Aboriginal history is rich and fascinating and will continue to be an area that the Dictionary team works hard to extend and deepen. If you know any good historians, amateur or professional, who are working in this area, please ask them to get in touch!

Some more products of our very successful joint project with the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts have been added to the Dictionary. Mark Dunn, our writer-in-residence, has written a history of the site and the building which form the current home of the SMSA, Lincoln House. While the building has only recently housed Sydney's oldest Mechanics' School, it has a story of its own, and it's a fascinating snapshot of the changing commercial uses of city property. House, furniture workshop, ironmongery, garage, bicycle factory and showroom, offices and now School of Arts, the site has had a chequered career. Mark has also outlined the history of the Bondi-Waverley School of Arts, founded twice, like quite a few others. In reading the story, one can see how important a dedicated building is, to create an ongoing organisation and a sense of continuity. Our project with the SMSA is nearly at an end and we thank them for their support over the last three years. It has been great working with the writers-in-residence, Mark Dunn  and before him, Catherine Freyne, and has produced a notable body of new scholarship on a series of related topics. A few more articles are still in the pipeline and will appear during 2012. You can find all the SMSA-sponsored articles here.

The new people in the Dictionary of Sydney are a mixed bunch indeed. Apart from the City of Sydney mayors I've already blogged about, we have a few other new faces. Noeline Kyle has contributed a fascinating piece on a woman known in Australia as Ruth Kaye, formerly Constance Kent, who served 20 years for child murder before emigrating and spending the rest of her life as a nurse and public servant. The Road Murder of 1860, to which she confessed in 1865, remained a cause celebre in England, but Ruth lived quietly in Australia to the age of 100. William Lawson is another of our new faces, although a better known one. Soldier, explorer, landowner and politician, he became known as 'Old Ironbark'. Tony Dawson has laid his long and successful life out for us. Marian Egan, born Mary Anne Cheers, is a welcome addition to our small but interesting number of colonial women. Written by her great-great-great niece, Annette Lemercier, this entry tells the story of a woman who rose from a convict family to become the wife of the Mayor of Sydney, Daniel Egan, only to perish in the wreck of the Dunbar. It's a tumultuous tale. The other biography added this time round is that of Maurice O'Connell, soldier and administrator, who married William Bligh's daughter Mary. Samantha Frappell has written about O'Connell and about his lavish house Tarmons, which later became the nucleus of St Vincent's Hospital and College.  

The new material in the Dictionary includes some new suburbs, old and new. Bradfield is a suburb that has disappeared, subsumed into the surrounding areas of West Killara  and West Lindfield.  Joan Rowland tells the story of a suburb built on a vision, that later became associated, to its disadvantage, with the migrants who were such an important part of its early days. Greenwich is one of Sydney's most beautiful harbourside suburbs, leafy and affluent. But it hasn't always been so, and its early prosperity was built on Sydney's maritime industries. Prue Macleod brings it to life. West Pymble was a wild and rollicking place in the early colony and into the 20th century, home to 'as great a set of ruffians as the Colony holds'.   Barbara Cameron-Smith has researched its characters, families and changes, and written us a fascinating account of it. And Yarrawarrah, in Sydney's far south, is our fourth suburb for this rebuild. Helen McDonald's entry outlines the progress of this quiet spot. Lots of the suburbs in the Dictionary have had pictures added, and our new Atlas of Sydney Suburbs provides 1880s maps for many suburban areas. Have a look around and don't forget to let us know what you think!