{"id":2443,"date":"2011-12-31T20:35:41","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T09:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=2443"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:33:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:33:53","slug":"top-10-posts-for-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2011\/12\/31\/top-10-posts-for-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 10 Posts for 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"two<\/a>
We have had lots of fun playing family cricket on the nearby oval these holidays. Here I am wicket keeping while my sister-in-law is batting. Photo by Ian Woolward<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blogs and cricket have something important in common – statistics!\u00a0 This week I’ve enjoyed spending lots of time with my family visiting from interstate and watching the exciting Boxing Day test match between India and Australia.\u00a0 It was a great example of test cricket – four days of see-sawing between the teams until Australia finally won.\u00a0\u00a0 I tried to write a blog post while watching the cricket but the cricket was way too interesting for me to write anything worth posting.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, I thought I would join the other bloggers out there and create a list of the posts on this blog that generated the most hits in 2011.<\/p>\n

10.\u00a0 50th Anniversary of the Sydney Baha’i Temple<\/a>:\u00a0 I took advantage of living close to this place of worship and spent an afternoon in the National Baha’i Archives doing research for this post.\u00a0 It is the only Baha’i Temple in Australia and receives thousands of visitors each year.\u00a0 The fact that this post is one of the most popular posts on my blog this year shows that it is also a magnetic for virtual visitors!<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0 Religion in State Schools<\/a>:\u00a0 This is a very brief overview of my thesis and the history of religious education in state schools in Australia.\u00a0 The role of religion in schools has been the subject of public debate during recent years in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.\u00a0 In fact I can tell when the debate has heated up again by a spike in hits on this page and the related post, The Transformation of a Word<\/a>.<\/p>\n

8.\u00a0 Cricket in Sydney 1876<\/a>:\u00a0 This does well whenever Australia and India are playing cricket.\u00a0 The genesis of this post came from my research on the history of teaching reading in Australia.\u00a0 Read the post to find out how cricket and education in the 19th century are related!<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0 Serendipitous Reading<\/a>:\u00a0 Serendipity is an experience that book readers love.\u00a0 The chance encounter with a book on a shelf that one hasn’t been looking for can expand our horizons unexpectedly.\u00a0 In this post I share my experience with serendipity starting in secondhand bookshops, moving onto my bookshelves and then considering serendipitous encounters with books in the virtual world.<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0 “An Unforgettable Inspiration”<\/a>:\u00a0 Everyone at my daughters’ high school was sad to see history teacher, Mr Mulley, retire.\u00a0 His classroom is testament to the rapport he had with his students.\u00a0 The walls are covered with murals painted by his students and messages from each departing year 12 class.\u00a0 I didn’t know how long it would be before the murals and messages would be painted over so on his last day I went into the classroom and photographed it.\u00a0 Check out my flickr set<\/a> for additional photos of the classroom not published on this post.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 Footnotes: “Sneakily Important”<\/a>:\u00a0 Who would have thought that a post on footnotes would be in the top 10?\u00a0 Perhaps there is a message to publishers here?\u00a0 Readers do care about footnotes!<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Australia’s Historic Newspapers Online<\/a>:\u00a0 Along with many other people, I love the National Library of Australia’s Trove website<\/a> where we can read Australia’s historic newspapers.\u00a0 However, it is important to realise that many historic Australian newspapers are still not available on this site.\u00a0 This post is about how some of us found another source of digitised Australian newspapers by collaborating on Twitter.<\/p>\n

3. Mapping Australia’s Natural Disasters: Space and Tim<\/a>e:\u00a0 Our family living near Tully in Far North Queensland had the scariest night of their lives when cyclone Yasi tore through their area.\u00a0 In the middle of the night when the cyclone was unleashing its fury we received an alarming phone call from them.\u00a0 Their house had been damaged and they were concerned that a nearby tree was going to crash onto them.\u00a0 They needed to escape.\u00a0 After they ran from their house we didn’t hear from them for many hours.\u00a0 I wrote this post in order to calm my nerves – there was little sleep in our house that night.\u00a0 My sister-in-law has written a post about their experience that frightening night which I recommend that you read – Yasi – our story one of many<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Southern Queensland Floods – Again<\/a>:\u00a0 Southern Queensland has had a problem with flooding since European settlement and there is also evidence of flooding in the area before this.\u00a0 Along with many others I watched the floods with concern and sympathy for those living in the path of the floods as well as admiration for the courage and tenacity shown by Queenslanders.\u00a0 This post highlights the foresight and hard work of the staff of the State Library of Queensland which saved some valuable collections as well as the history of flooding in southern Queensland.<\/p>\n

Drum roll please….<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Sydney University Library: Borrowers Protest<\/a>:\u00a0 Around the world libraries have been closing or drastically reducing the size of their collections and the services they offer.\u00a0 Then my alma mater, the University of Sydney, announced a massive book cull and significant staff cuts at their libraries.\u00a0 It is easy to react and protest but I don’t believe that any librarian would willingly destroy a collection.\u00a0 I wanted to find out more about the thinking behind these actions so I took the opportunity to interview the man behind the decisions, University of Sydney Librarian, John Shipp.\u00a0 In the midst of dealing with the furore that ensued after the announcement of the book cull and staff cuts, he took the time to answer my questions at length.\u00a0 Whatever we may think of his decisions, I believe that he should be admired for advertising his e-mail address, making himself available for media interviews and attending the student demonstration protesting his decisions with his name badge on.<\/p>\n

A Big Thankyou!<\/h3>\n

No person is an island.\u00a0 As with any endeavour I could not have been able to write this blog without the support of my family even though they groan when I give them frequent updates on my blog statistics!\u00a0 Hubble (my other half) and I made the decision to start our blogs at the same time.\u00a0 Even though our blogs are quite different in terms of the topics covered (his blog<\/a> is about cloud computing) we have been cheering each other’s successes and motivating each other to do more.\u00a0 Thankyou Hubble for your encouragement!<\/p>\n

In the same vein a big thankyou goes to my sister-in-law, June Perkins.\u00a0 She was the first in the family to start blogging years ago and she has provided a great example for me to follow.\u00a0 It is wonderful to see her successes blogging for ABC Open<\/a> this year as well as continuing with some great posts on her personal blog, Pearlz Dreaming<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the history side of things I owe much to the staff and students in the University of Sydney history department.\u00a0 Many of my posts are a result of what I have learned there.\u00a0 I am also very grateful to Bill Green<\/a> (Charles Sturt University), Phil Cormack<\/a> (University of South Australia) and Annette Patterson<\/a> (Queensland University of Technology) who gave me the opportunity to work on their research project about the history of teaching reading in Australia.\u00a0 Many of the insights on this blog arose while working in archives for this project.<\/p>\n

I am also very grateful to the countless librarians and archivists who have helped me both at the place where physical collections are stored and online.\u00a0 Historians are very dependent on historic collections being available for research.\u00a0 I hope my posts about the issues facing libraries have in a small way helped to raise awareness of how important they continue to be in the online era.<\/p>\n

I discovered twitter this year and have learned so much from it and felt the support of the online community.\u00a0 Twitter is much maligned for trading in trivialities, but I choose to follow those who share their professional learning and experience.\u00a0 I have learned so much from twitter this year. Please check out the tweeps I follow<\/a> – there are some gems out there.<\/p>\n

And finally A BIG THANKYOU to you, the reader of this blog.\u00a0 Thankyou for your comments throughout the year.\u00a0 Please feel free to tell me what you would like me to write about in 2012 in the comments below.<\/p>\n

\"Statues<\/a>
A happy new year to you from the kangaroo statues in King George Square, Brisbane!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A big thankyou for supporting my blog this year! The end of a year is time for reflection… and the writing of lists! Have a meander through my most popular posts for 2011 and some holiday photos. Let me know what you would like to read on my blog next year by adding a comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[43,74,81,120,139,154,159,160],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Yvonne Perkins","author_link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/author\/yvonne\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7197,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions\/7197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}