Electronic Lab Books Nicolas Bertrand, Environmental Informatics e-Science Consultant
Transcript
1. Electronic Lab Books Nicolas Bertrand, Environmental
Informatics e-Science Consultant
2. Overview
Lab books in Science
Issues
Opportunities
Trial
Lessons learned
Future Direction
3. Scientific Lab books
Day to day account of scientific research
essential information about planning, designing and running of
scientific experiments
A component of Quality Assurance
Communication tool between project leader and scientist
4. What is a lab book?
Hard bound
Diary
(Index)
Page numbers
Chronological
(Carbon copies)
Sketches / diagrams
Text
Raw data
Counter signature
5. Issues
Not readily accessible
Not searchable
(Not readable)
Easy to loose
Archival, annotation, QA, reviewal and referencing of lab book
material is at the very least inconsistent
6. Examples
7. Opportunities
Searching
Archival
Sharing
Openness
Auditing
Version Control
Accessibility
8. Electronic lab notebook: call for volunteers
Maintain in parallel a paper based lab notebook and a personal
web-based lab book for a period of 3 Weeks.
Provide regular feedback to build a desired feature list to
define requirements for an electronic lab notebook system for
CEH.
9. The Trial
Web diary
(a.k.a. Blog or
weblog)
Confluence (wiki & blog)
10. More about Confluence
Commercial Java-based blog + wiki
Open API for extension and integration
Source code available for developers
Built on Open source technologies
Enterprise security
Attractive, user-friendly WYSIWYG interface
Powerful tools for structuring and searching your wiki
Professional features such as PDF export
11. Confluence Features (continued)
12. Confluence at CEH
Environmental Informatics
Countryside Survey
Countryside Survey Steering group
Countryside Survey Surveyors
NERC Strategy Group
High Performance Computing and e-Science Technical Advisory
Group
Trobit
CCS
EHFI Bids
Informatics Liaison Network
ISFG
Mixture Toxicity
edcat
Electronic lab book trial
Electronic lab book discussion wiki
STATISTICS 701 pages 5447 versions 249 pages with attachments 1347
pages with attachments 1555 attachment versions 41 pages with
comments 123 comments 52 Authors
13. Volunteers 1. Darren Sleep (QA Manager, ECP Section,
Lancaster) - dsleep 2. Bob Possee (Head of Site. Virologist,
Oxford) - rdpo 3. Rob Griffiths (Microbiologist, Ecologist, Oxford)
- rig 4. Andrew Worgan (GIS / Organic Chemistry, Dorset) - adpw -
Start date: 06 July 2006 5. Jonathan Evans (Hydrologist,
Wallingforfd) - jge Start date: 24 july 2006 -- continuing to use
labbook despite end of pilot 6. David Wilson (ECP, Lancaster) -
drwi Start Date: 26 September 2006 7. David Williams (Field Support
/ Laboratory Technician, Bangor) 8. Mark Bescoby (Radiochemist,
Lancaster) start date: 26 September 2006 9. Neville Llewellyn
(Organic analytical chemist, Wallingford) 10. Thien Ho (Virologist,
Oxford) 11. Gillian Ainsworth (Environmental Chemist, Lancaster) -
Start date: 12 July 2006 12. Susan Brown (Microbiologist (amoeba),
Dorset) Start date: 17 july 2006 13. Jan Dick (Landscape
restoration ecologist, Edinburgh) - pulled out on 15 September 2006
14. Richard Ellis (Climate Modeller, Wallingford) Start date: 21
September 2006 continuing to use lab book despite end of pilot 15.
Fai Fung (Hydrologist, Wallingford) start date: 23 September
2006
14. Issues with the trial
Lack of support for sketching / diagrams
Not quite there as a replacement for a paper lab book (lab
environment / field work)
No offline editing
15. In the lab Digital Pens Digital lab book upload