Electronic Lab Notebook (.doc). Store your data electronically.
Many labs still rely on the traditional medium of paper-based lab notebooks to record and store their valuable experimental research. However, the disadvantages of storing experimental data has several difficulties such as:
Accessing data (looking through page after page of not clearly written notebooks).
Sharing data.
Making changes (e.g. when experimental conditions change during the project).
Extracting information to create reports.
Querying the data to find the exact information you need
Proving compliance to a process or regulatory set of guidelines
We think it is time for any academic lab to adopt a more efficient method of recording, accessing and searching experimental data. The form for an electronic laboratory notebook (download free for everybody; format: .doc) is a very simple electronic record-keeping tool that provides an solution to the problems presented by storing research information on paper. All of the knowledge associated with an experiment is stored securely in a central location, where it can be searched and accessed with comparative ease. Sample entries for e.g. PCR reactioncs, enzymatic reaction or preparing a mastermix are included.
An electronic version of a lab-member's lab book allows efficient knowledge mining because of the ability to search for, locate and extract information easily. Such an e-notebook can significantly reduce the time and cost of searching for previous data and knowledge. Improved collection, storage, protection and measurement also fulfil essential scientific legal requirements. The risk of loosing data when personnel leave the lab is reduced.
If you are working with an intranet, privileges associated with user roles (supervisor, technician etc..) can control access to visibility of data, while electronic time-stamping enables an audit trail of all access to and changes to the data.
It is was estimated that a researcher spends anything from 5-25% of available research time formatting, cutting and pasting, and transcribing data into paper notebooks. Writing a paper or preparing a seminar, for example, often involves copying from a paper lab book into a spreadsheet or another application, duplicating the task of data entry. The chronological nature of a lab book does not lend itself to quick and efficient searching - experiments can be split over different pages or even books.
This lab-notebook also permits additional experimental information to be added as it becomes available, and - if used properly - provides a tamper-proof tracking system maintaining an audit trail of all the changes made.
