Dog Days: Relay for Dogs

On Saturday we went to the 1st annual Relay for Dogs event!  Despite the Georgia heat, we had a blast.

Relay for Life is sponsored by the American Cancer Society, and every year, there are people who want to bring their dogs to Relay but dogs are not allowed at Relay. So this year, as a fund raiser for the American Cancer Society, Mandy created and hosted Relay for Dogs.  The event included booths, K-9 demonstration, microchipping and pet ID tags, a pet look alike contest, and several other events.  I do not have an exact account, but around 300 dogs attended the event from the tinest 7 week old Chihuahua to large Great Danes.  One of the attendees was my border collie, Chance:

Chance at Relay for Dogs

Chance was supposed to actually walk through the tunnel, which was part of the obstacle course, but he decided it was a great place to escape the heat. Smart dog!

A great accessory: Blue Ribbon Blog Rally for Free Speech Online

The blue ribbon is a great accessory to any blog to support free speech throughout the world.

~I have never been a person who would stoop to self-censoring and I never will be. I’d rather not write at all if I have to stop being frank and honest in my words. -Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi~

Thanks to T at Notes of an Anesthesioboist for getting this going, a group of bloggers is holding a blog rally in support of Roxana Saberi, who is spending her birthday on a hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she has been incarcerated for espionage. According to NPR, “The Iranian Political Prisoners Association lists hundreds of people whose names you would be even less likely to recognize: students, bloggers, dissidents, and others who, in a society that lacks a free press, dare to practice free expression.”

Hearing reports like these has prompted us to do a ribbon campaign. Blue for blogging.

Please consider placing a blue ribbon on your blog or website this week in honor of the journalists, bloggers, students, and writers who are imprisoned in Evin Prison, nicknamed “Evin University”, and other prisons around the world, for speaking and writing down their thoughts. Also, please ask others to join our blog rally.

Omid, incidentally, means hope in Farsi. Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi is dead. Hope has to live on.

————————-

Text is from Notes of an Anesthesioboist and Paul Levy of Running a hospital

Free Press Map of the World from Reporters Without Borders:

Too fast and way too furious: Web 2.0 overload

“@jenz036 I need 26 hours”

I often need 26 hours in a day so I can get at least 2 hours of sleep. Recently my exploration of several web tools has taken a vast amount of my time, especially considering I only review these new apps at home.

Each day there are great new tools online and I am constantly trying to just catch-up, and never able to stay ahead of the new developments. As I deploy a new program at work, introducing staff to RSS & other web tools, I now understand their frustration with lack of time.

Originally, I associated the lack of enthusiasm with resistance to change, but now I am seeing it through another viewpoint. @aldricham pointed out an excellent post today A Dozen Ingredients for a Culture of Innovation. It list making innovation a priority. While I agree, you should put innovation above certain items (pointless meetings, emails), how do you put innovation above paperwork in a hospital? Even with the new EMR systems it is still difficult for doctors & nurses to maintain detailed charts. So how do they find time to explore new tools? Also, what happens when they learn a new tool which is obsolete the next day? Now they have wasted time, are frustrated, and reluctant to learn anything else.

What can you do to help overloaded staff? How can you make adopting easier? How can an OPL not spend a great deal of time reviewing several tools to rule them out due to TOS, difficult implementation, etc.

Slow down! Get out of the fast lane and take time to reflect, even if it does make you look like a zombie. My suggestion is remember you do NOT have to review everything, which can be difficult to remember and resist! It is also important to keep in mind you are looking to fill a user’s need, and not show-off a new flashy tool.

Anyone have suggestions for determining user’s needs, even when they do not know their needs? Or suggestions for implementing new tools? These are two difficult areas for me when I implement anything new.

Time to unpack:

Welcome to the new & improved Alisha764’s a solo medical librarian’s ramblings. Take a look around and please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement. All previous posts and comments have been moved to this blog, which is one reason I switched now instead of later (more postings= harder to move). This blog is a work in progress and hopefully the switch will mean easier posting and inspire more postings!

Thank you for stopping by!

~Alisha764