Electronic Lab Notebooks ITC – 2/18/2011

1. Electronic Lab NotebooksITC – 2/18/2011 Jan Cheetham & Alan Wolf DoIT – AT Cheryl Scadlock & Victoria Sutton WARF

2. By Julia Manzerova Lab notebooks are used to document research, experiments and procedures.

3. Electronic lab notebooks replicate traditional lab notebooks offering both advantages to paper versions, but challenges as well.

4. Why? • Researchers contacting WARF & DoIT • Interest expressed at lab notebook workshops • Labs & departments exploring ELNs independently • ELNs could improve • record keeping • collaboration • data management

5. Project outline • Determine needs • Determine requirements and feasibility • Identify participants • Identify ELN tools and plan pilots • Implement pilots • Evaluate pilots and provide recommendations for next steps

6. Decision making • Decision to proceed, reassess, or stop at each project milestone • Executive committee • Sarah Castello(Grad School) • Irwin Goldman (CALS) • Steve Harsy (SMPH) • Jim Muehlenberg (DoIT – AT)

7. Current practice • While using paper notebooks, many have digital workflows shoehorned into notebooks • Digital data sets referenced in notebook • Back ups are rare • Searching requires knowing who and when • Consistency of practice within labs variesgreatly

8. Interest in ELNs • Market research finds significant growth in ELN implementation • ~50% of respondents to survey of Biotech Center Sequencing Core users express interest • Interviews • Most noted significant digital workflows • Many would consider being part of a pilot • Represents the future of data recording

9. Where are we? • Establishing requirements • Surveying available products • Select products for testing • Pilot groups • Evaluate pilots • Make recommendations

10. Other considerations • Primary audience are traditional LN users • However, we will consider wider utility • We are exploring commercial products • We could find no viable open source candidates • Products hosted off-site as SaaS