Drumroll…

The new Dictionary of Sydney is now live!

There are 28 new articles, totalling over 65,000 words, and the team has uploaded and captioned 238 pictures, created and researched new 417 entities, added 1676 factoids, written 948 entity descriptions, and created 1148 new entity links. There are also new external links, and you’ll notice that we’ve brought the demographics right into the middle of  the suburb pages, as well as linking to them in the right column. Each of those demographic pages has full stats for its suburb from the last 3 censuses.

But those are just facts and figures. Let me tell you about the new content.

Lucien Henry in his studio, Pitt Street c1890, photo from the Powerhouse Museum 99/119/2

Among the people, are two new biographies of Aboriginal people, Caruey and Bungaree, both survivors of the first invasion, written by Keith Vincent Smith. We also have entries on educator and founder of the SMSA, Henry Carmichael, and artist and SMSA teacher Lucien Henry, by Mark Dunn, whose work was supported by our partnership with the SMSA. Jodi Frawley’s entry on Joseph Maiden, scientist and director of the Botanic Gardens is also part of this ongoing project. Complex philanthropist George Ardill has been profiled by John Ramsland and guru and man of power Charles Leadbeater has been examined by Garry Wotherspoon.

This upload’s organisation entries are heavy on the arts and cultural sector, with two short pieces by Silas Clifford-Smith covering a twentieth century artists’ group, the Australian Arts Club and a public gallery run by the Department of Education. We also have an entry on the Museum of Sydney, one of our partners in the ongoing Living Exhibitions project, funded by ARC grant.

Salvation Army congress meeting in Wirth's Circus tent April 1941, photo by Sam Hood, SLNSW hood_30690

Three event articles are newly included in the Dictionary: Mark Dunn’s piece on the Industrial and Art Exhibition of 1861 is also part of the SMSA project, while Garry Wotherspoon continues the cultural theme with an account of the foundation of the Tropfest film festival. David Woodbury’s colourful piece on the foundation of the Salvation Army in Sydney brings this tumultuous religious awakening to life.

Seven new suburb entries go into the Dictionary in this rebuild, including a long overview, by Shirley Fitzgerald, of the idea of Sydney itself , tracing over time the development of the city’s self-image.  Other suburbs include Botany and Daceyville, our first entries in the City of Botany Bay, and the north shore suburbs of Lane Cove, and Turramurra, South Turramurra and North Turramurra, by one of our most prolific contributors, Joan Rowland.

Cartoon from Sydney Punch, June 15, 1867 p 30 "Why, the 'Bobbies' is so precious busy putting us coves on board the 'Vernon', I thought I'd come out as a hunpurtected female"

Essays range across a wide spectrum as usual. John Ramsland, Emeritus Professor of History at Newcastle University, outlines institutions of punishment and reform for both adults and children in his essays on Prisons and Children’s institutions. Richard White and Justine Greenwood, of Sydney University, have examined the development and influence of tourism on Sydney. Meredith and Verity Burgmann analyse the effect of Green bans on the city, and Marie-Louise McDermott has distilled her work on Sydney’s ocean baths into a lively piece. Garry Wotherspoon’s series on Sydney’s gateway roads, already begun in the Dictionary, continues with the southern and south-western approaches to the city. Finally, Veronica Quinteros has written an evocative essay on Sydney’s Chilean community.

New images are always a highlight of our regeneration process and this one is no exception. Look for new illustrations in Christian church architecture, Children, Green Park, Maori, HMS Sirius and Parramatta Park, among others. Catherine Freyne’s biography of Violet McKenzie, one of our SMSA project articles, is now fully illustrated and Violet’s entity page now links to Catherine’s radio program about Violet, which you can download from ABC Radio National.

This upload brings the Dictionary to 600 articles, over 840,000 words (about 6 volumes, if we were a print encyclopedia), over 2000 images and multimedia.

Thanks as always to Steven Hayes and everyone at Arts eResearch, at the University of Sydney, for their tireless work building and supporting the Dictionary, and making it all possible. We’re really pleased with this new upload, and we’d love to hear from readers, when you’ve had time to have a look. We’ll even appreciate it if you tell us about the typos!