Electronic Laboratory Notebooks: More than Notes from CNI Video Channel on Vimeo.
Alan Wolf
Assistant Chief Information Officer for Advanced Computing
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Jan Cheetham
Research and Instructional Technologies Consultant
University of Wisconsin – Madison
After a number of years experimenting with and evaluating Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELN), the University of Wisconsin-Madison rolled out an ELN service to campus researchers in the fall of 2014. The ELN service is one of our first enterprise tools that is specifically designed to manage data coming from research labs. Our implementation is firmly grounded in our campus data stewardship policy, which requires the full knowledge and control of data in the system by the principal investigator of the research. While this slows adoption rate, it has introduced many opportunities for educating researchers about data management practices and for gaining insight into how research data is recorded and documented in campus labs. The ELN represents a substantial step forward in stewardship of research data but there is still much to be learned about the longevity of digital notebook records: which formats best preserve the record of discovery, how to archive attached data files, and what approach will enable researchers to move seamlessly from active work on a project and its data to creating an archive of the work. As more institutions adopt ELNs as a part of their data management strategy, we wish to begin a discussion of ELN implementation and preservation at a national level.