UW-Madison researchers soon will have the option to store and organize lab notebooks with a new software service called Electronic Lab Notebook, according to a Tuesday university release Tuesday.
The new software application serves many of the same functions as a paper lab notebook but offers additional searchability, integration with digital data sources and access controls to facilitate collaboration and protect intellectual property, according to the release.
Many electronic notebooks on the market do not meet important security, usability and data storage requirements important to UW researchers. A campus ELN team therefore identified a central software solution.
Several UW-Madison labs already use electronic notebooks and have participated in software pilots for years.
Jean-Michel Ané, a professor of agronomy, said in the release a large amount of data was being lost before switching to electronic notebooks. He said researchers dealt with confusion between digital and print before switching to electronic notebooks.
Mark Meyer, an associate scientist in Wesley Pike’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry, also started using an ELN.
“Nearly everything our lab does is digital,” Meyer said in the release. “An ELN was a no-brainer.”
The university established the new contract with LabArchives, which will make new software available for use in labs at no cost beginning this month.
The software features include basic drawing, image annotation, chemistry tools, a PDF export resembling a traditional lab notebook, calculation tools and integration with Google documents.
