Notebooks

LABORATORY NOTEBOOKS

Remember the phrase: If it’s not written down, it never happened!!

Proper record keeping is a critical skill in science.  In this class you’re required to keep a written record of all your lab work.  What do you include in your notebook?  Basically, everything you do!  Your notebook is the only account of the work you've done.  Imagine that a year later you need a piece of information from one of your experiments.  Could you find it or understand what you meant?  Even more importantly, could somebody else understand what you did?  In a professional setting, your lab notebook may be important from a legal perspective as evidence in a court case over patents or royalties.  The keys are to be neat, organized, and complete. 

In this class we will be using electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs). So instead of keeping your notes in a traditional bound notebook as you've done in previous classes, you'll be entering them to the ELN.  Specifically, we will be using a commercial product from LabArchives.com.  Each of you will receive an email with instructions on how subscribe to this service (cost is $25 for the semester).  You will also find instructions on how to make entries in your ELN.

Electronic lab notebooks are becoming common in industrial and academic laboratories throughout the world and offer several advantages over their paper-bound counterparts, including:

• More complete recording of observations due to incorporation of digital photos and video

• More integrated notebooks with hyperlinks to data files, documents, and websites

• Quicker access to information through search functions

• 24/7 access to notebook

• Ability to easily share data with collaborators 

After each experiment is complete, I will check your notebooks and assign a grade of 0-5 points based on its completeness.

Keeping a Laboratory Notebook

So how do you keep a good lab notebook?  Basically, a notebook should be complete in telling a story about what you did and what you discovered, and it should provide the details necessary for you or someone else to perform the experiment again in exactly the same way. Below is a list of rules I expect you to follow regarding your notebook.  When reading these instructions, keep in mind that the notebook standards in industrial research labs make these requirements look “wimpy.”

• Each experiment consists of five sections (pages) in the notebook: Information, Experimental, Data Analysis, Summary/Conclusions, and Report. 

• Simply fill in the required information on the Information page: title of the experiment, source of the procedure, partner(s) if you worked with one of more partners, and the purpose of the experiment.

• The Experimental page should document every step you carried out in the procedure.  Make use of headings, tables, and even digital photos of particular steps.  

  • • It is acceptable to write/draw on paper, then scan the paper or take a picture of it, and upload it to the notebook.

    • If you are working with a lab partner(s) you must copy his/her measurements directly into your own notebook.  In reviewing your work you will want to have all the experimental details recorded, with no holes in the procedure.

    • Be sure to record the file names of all data files you generate using a particular instrument so you can find them later.

    • It is important to include data that is generated by an instrument.  This can be done through uploaded photos of the data, or uploaded pdf copies of the data.

• The Data Analysis page should include all the calculations (with commentary) you carried out with the data you collected.  In most cases it is fine to simply upload a well-labeled spreadsheet.

• The Summary/Conclusions page should be a short summary of your principal findings, along with any comments about the project.

• It is common practice to sign and date each page in a notebook, and LabArchives does have the capability to do this electronically.  BUT DO NOT ELECTRONICALLY SIGN A PAGE, since it locks the page and prohibits me from adding comments.