Here’s a last-minute entry for those in the Rochester, NY area: the Pittsford Community Library will have a book group meeting to discuss Pride and Prejudice on Thursday, May 8 (today!) from 1:30 to 3 p.m.

The folks in Calgary have a little more time to plan for this one: this Saturday, the Jane Austen Society presents “Plotting Sexual Pursuit: Origin and Implications of Jane Austen’s Courtship Plots,” a lecture by U of C English prof Dr. David Oakleaf at the Sunalta Community Centre, 1627 19th Ave. S.W.

We’ve posted about this before, but since we talked about it as part of our presentation at the JASNA Super Regional event in Rochester this past weekend, we thought it was time to post it again: one of our favorite Jane Austen sites on the Internet, the Augusta Burke Notebooks at Goucher College Library’s website.

Augusta Burke was a Janeite who, beginning in the 1930s, amassed an incredible collection of Jane Austen first editions, letters, and other memorabilia, most of which she bequeathed to Goucher College, her alma mater. Part of the collection is a series of notebooks in which Mrs. Burke pasted articles and clippings that referenced Jane Austen and her work. She kept these notebooks from 1935 until her death in 1975.

The Jane Austen Collection website also contains a PDF of a booklet printed in 2000 for the 25th anniversary of the collection. The booklet includes a letter from Mrs. Burke’s husband, Henry, one of the founders of JASNA, to the director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in which he explains about the notebooks. We loved this quote:

Alberta started keeping notebooks where even the most casual Austen reference merited an entry. Approximately 2,800 items of this sort have found their way into 10 notebooks which are now a part of the Austen collection. Anything worth clipping was pasted into the notebooks…The three big items which almost filled a notebook apiece were the production of Helen Jerome’s Pride and Prejudice, the movie with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, and the musical First Impressions.

Other highlights of the notebooks include receipts for and correspondence about the items that the Burkes acquired for their collection–including a first edition of Emma, uncut and in boards (which means it’s never been read) for $135! A first edition of P&P for £15 8 shillings!

We encourage our readers to spend some time surfing around the notebooks. However, make sure you have several hours to kill–you’ll get lost in there.

The Dole Branch Library in Oak Park, Illinois, will have a discussion of Pride and Prejudice on May 6 at 7:30 p.m. Tea will be served.

Since we received two e-mails from Alert Janeites last week, though this is not a new item, we thought we should repost for the benefit of some of the newer AustenBlog visitors.

Alert Janeites Baja Janeite and Lynne both sent us links to the Jane Austen Little Thinkers doll, to which they both reacted with the general attitude of What the Ferrars? We own this doll (being a huge Jane nerd) and think it’s so ugly it’s cute. She sits on our bed and looks quite pretty there. And if you look at the rest of the Little Thinkers dolls, they look pretty much the same, so it’s not a cut on Jane. (We also have the finger puppet, which we use to terrify our co-workers. JANE SAYS REDRUM!)

Baja Janeite also sent us a link to the lovely paper doll of Jane Austen at Legacy Pride Paper Dolls, which we also own (did we mention we’re a big Jane nerd?) The artist has created paper dolls for all of Jane Austen’s heroes and heroines–do check them out, they are gorgeous.

ETA: And of course we can’t forget the fabulous Jane Austen Action Figure!

Baja Janeite also found an article about a young lady who makes Barbie dolls into characters from literature, including Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. We think that must be Lizzy right there in the front of the photo in the pretty blue spencer. And wheee, Horatio Hornblower! We see him there with his sword drawn. Her dolls are on display at the Sumner Library in Sumner, Washington, through the end of March.

We heard from Janet Lee, who has a question for our Gentle Readers.

I am an English Leader and Literacy Consultant from Canada. I am happy that I found your Blog. You see, I have the responsibility of leading the English department Leader meetings at my school board. At the last meeting, we were debating the validity of the Internet vs. the Library. One of the leaders said, “The library is best because…I mean…you can’t find Jane Austen on the Internet!” This comment has bothered me so much because I knew that Jane had a following that would be valid in the classroom. Today I typed in Jane Austen and Blog into Google and found your amazing Austenblog site!! I have looked at the P&P Barbie, browsed announcements about Jane Austen singing tours, seen photos of people dressed like Jane and learned the term Janeites all in the past 5 minutes!

Your Blog is a wonderful way to bring Jane alive again for students! Could you post my comment for others to see and comment on. I would like to have a collection of comments to present at the next English department leaders’ meeting on Monday, February 25th. Thank you for your enormous efforts and love of Jane! GO JANEITES!!!

Thank you!
Janet Lee

We also would like to humbly point out AustenBlog’s associate site, Molland’s, particularly the e-texts, not only of Jane Austen’s novels but of public domain books and articles about Jane Austen and her work (and we will be adding more very, very soon–watch this space!).

We also would like to point out another useful site for students who are studying Jane Austen’s work, or just discovering her work and wanting to learn more. The Jane Austen Society of North America’s website at jasna.org not only has a short biography of Jane Austen but a comprehensive section about the films based on her novels and the real treasure trove of the site: the publications! Reviews of books related to Jane Austen and her work as well as the journals, Persuasions On-Line, which, as implied by its title, is an online publication of essays about Jane Austen and her work, and JASNA also has been digitizing back issues of its print journal, Persuasions. (Issue No. 10 is the latest to be added–when we get around to Friday Bookblogging this week, we planned to include it, but we’ll mention it here first). And let’s not forget the annual Essay Contest–specifically targeted to high school and university students.

We mention all these because we know we have a lot of new readers, as well as for Janet’s colleagues. So, Gentle Readers, let’s hear about your experiences with Jane Austen on the Internet! Fellowship is obvious, but what have you learned about Jane Austen on the ‘tubes?

P.S. It is an often-voiced aphorism at AustenBlog World Headquarters: Librarians Rock! As do libraries! We use ours as shamelessly as Willoughby used Eliza Williams.

Alert Janeite Eileen wrote to tell us that Jane Austen is one of only four women listed in the top 100 of the WorldCat Identities project. Eileen commented,

And the four represent an interesting cross section of our gender!

Jane Austen
Agatha Christie
Mary, Blessed Virgin
Virginia Woolf

That’s an interesting combination of women, all right!

We asked Eileen for more information about the project, and she told us:

This is a project that is experimenting with ways to improve how library catalogs work. It uses the OCLC WorldCat database, which is the largest database of library holdings in the world. You can search on an author, composer or even a fictional character and the results returned are organized in a more intuitive manner than most library catalogs. . .It’s still experimental and clearly has some work to do (it classes The Jane Austen Book Club as a work about Jane Austen). But let’s say you’re just getting into Jane. Clicking on her identity leads you to a list of books she wrote, as well as books about her, cross references and related subjects. All in one place.

Eileen also sent a link to the aggregate data for Jane Austen so far on the project. This is an amazing project, and will be incredibly useful (and obsession-generating) to those of us who can never get enough information on our favorite subjects. Eileen also sent a link about the project that explains it pretty succinctly:

The idea of WorldCat Identities is simple: create a summary page for every name in WorldCat.

One of our favorite aphorisms is: Librarians Rock! Because you do.