Jencey's Corner

Kristin Harmel has recently released her latest book to the world The Book of Lost Names.  I cannot wait to read it myself.  I have very much enjoyed her other books.  Kristin needs our help!  Due to COVID-19, there has been a delay in printing more copies of  The Book of Lost Names.   Many of the bookstores around the country's shelves are empty. We all want to be able to share more stories from Kristin in the future.  Purchasing a copy of her book ensures that we readers will hear more from Kristin Harmel in the future.  She is relaunching her book starting tomorrow. I will include some buy links:   Bookshop.org                             Barnes and Noble Books-A-Million                       Amazon         Simon & Schuster Here is a synopsis of the book  "Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-f

Last summer I had the honor of reading the Queen Bee by Dorothea Benton Frank.   Do I consider this book a beach read? Yes, it is.   It is also the last book that Dorothea Benton Frank will ever share with the public. I also had an opportunity to meet her once. She passed away last summer and was at the top of my list   when came to thinking of my favorite writers that publish during this beach read season.   A patron where I work highly recommended this one. Beekeeper Holly McNee Jensen quietly lives in a world of her own on Sullivans Island, tending her hives and working at the local island library. Holly calls her mother The Queen Bee because she’s a demanding hulk of a woman. Her mother, a devoted hypochondriac, might be unaware that she’s quite ill but that doesn’t stop her from tormenting Holly. To escape the drama, Holly’s sister Leslie married and moved away, wanting little to do with island life. Holly’s escape is to submerge herself in the lives of the two young boys ne

Dewey Readathon begins with introductions:  My name is Jencey Gortney.   I am reading from Atlanta Georgia in the US.   I am reading and will be starting with two books  The Last of The Moon Girls by Barbara Davis and continuing with my audiobook Written In My Own Hearts Blood by Diana Gabaldon .   I am looking forward to finally reading a Barbara Davis book and not using an audiobook.   The snack that I am most looking forward to beginning with is my Cinnamon Starbucks coffee.  I will then proceed to the oatmeal bars that I made from scratch.  I just finished yesterday twelve hours of graduate school.  I am working on my master's in Library Science from the University of Alabama.  I work at a library in north Atlanta and I love books.  I am glad to be here to do because this is a great activity to do while in quarantine! :) This is not my first Dewey Readathon.  It has been a while since I participated.  I am glad to be back.  One action I would like to do to make my

Crowdsourcing is a new concept for me.     Crowdsourcing is the use of a network or a group to create content for a   specific task within a business (Paniagua & Korzynski, 2017).   Social media provides another way for crowdsourcing to take place.   The engagement between the owners of the   social media account and its followers would be important for when given a task to follow up and assess these contributions. It would be important to invest in others and make them feel part of the group.   My first thought when reading one of the other articles for class that discussed crowdsourcing is it would help my sister’s business.   Since COVID-19   has occurred they have set up an online store so that they could continue to do business.   I thought it might be useful to begin using crowdsourcing since they would have time to focus more on the social media aspect of their business.   I have not followed up with my sister to see if they were able to start crowdsourcing but here

What is the library brand?  Or how would the library define it's brand when using social media? Libraries that choose to make use of social media be more than impersonal posts about their programs and services.  They can reach out to the community and support educating them to learn more about the causes that are interested in supporting social justice.    I began thinking about the branding question because of my project Sussex Royal Instagram Analysis.  Harry and Meghan have to decide what their brand will be going forward because they are unable to use the word royal.   A library when they choose to use social media has to define what their brand is.  Will, it only is impersonal posts communicating to patrons about the library services or will it reach out to the community?  A study at Montana State University uses Twitter to reach out to the students by using the hashtag #askalibrarian.  One way to reach out to the community is to find out what their needs are. Should t

My topic is the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Sussex Royal Instagram page.   There are many topics that I could discuss these two very prominent people.  The future of their social media presence is about to change, but they are continuing to post.  My direction for this post will focus on the impact of their current presence and the civility of those who follow them.   The treatment by the media also impacts the civility that occurs in their posts. Bot followers can impact social media accounts in an article 6 Rules to Follow When Using Instagram Bots .  These are followers that are artificial intelligence that can be used to follow accounts in social media and on Instagram.  One comment made on the most recent post was that many of the positive responses were cut pasted from other posts using bots (Social media explorer team, 2019).  Many social media networks try to root out these bot followers.  The discussion from this current post on St. David Day verges on also not being ve

I became a bigger fan of the royal family when I was introduced to first Kate and William after their wedding, and then to Harry and Meghan.  I don't remember seeing young royals being published in the news in the United States for their work or activities in England prior to the previously mentioned couples.  After Harry and Meghan wed and became the Duke and Duchess of Sussex their audience got to learn more about who they are and what they are passionate about through their work.    For this course, I will be focusing on their Instagram account Susses Royal which is the official page for their work.  In the fall  Harry and Meghan wanted to use this account to support people all over the world who lead a cause or made a major contribution to their community.  The Sussex Royal account would follow back any individual that met this criterion.  Both Harry and Meghan are big supporters of charity work.  The news coverage that has followed their work more closely in recent

My initial impressions of bookmarks online and social tagging were not what I thought it would be.  I and others are probably familiar with creating bookmarks in your browser.    Social tagging to me referred to using folksonomies to link data to one another webpages.  How could they work together?  Which is better? The first article we read this week is about social marketing.  It describes sites that use these functions.  I will use Pinterest as an example in this area.  Social tagging is defined as: "Social tagging is a way for online users to categorize and share content. Within a social tagging system, users describe and categorize web content with a set of their own keywords, called "tags," and diverse content is searched and shared using these tags.  Because tags generated by individual users also help other users search and organize content, the collections of individually generated tags are called "social  tags." (J-Stor Daily, 2019  I had neve

 This week the topic is discussed Folksonomies and Ontologies, and their impact on social media.    They play an important role in social media.   How can they play an important role in connecting information?    My experience with folksonomies is more advanced than my experience with ontologies.  Folksonomies are the use of words to connect posts in social media together.  An example would be using a hashtag to make posts more searchable.    I have often used them her to let both the publicist and author know that I have posted a review of the book or the guest post that has been written by the author is available.  Ontologies are the study of how two items connect using a common language.  An example of this blog would be using one of my reviews that I have also posted on Amazon to help someone decide whether or not that person would want to purchase a book.  Shoppers can also grade the reviewer by how effective their review is.  I feel that both concepts folksonomies and  Ont

Hello again!  I know that it has been a while since I have posted anything.  I started graduate school in the fall of 2018 at the University of Alabama Distance Learning program.     I am studying Library Science and Information Management.  I  have read many great books in the meantime you can check my Goodreads  feed to see what I am currently reading.  I will be posting for my latest class Library Science 565.  This class will  discuss interaction of Social Media and Libraries. I began my journey with social media in 2007.   I joined Facebook through an invite by a friend.   Once I joined Facebook, I started exploring what the site had to offer.   My informatics or the information that I selected to share with others, in my profile. One of the ways I use this site is to network and meet people.  It can also be a way of learning to process what is shared over time.     Over the years I received advice for what to post and how to develop a social network of people. I starte