A new leaf

Record-keeping in the lab has stayed unchanged for hundreds of years, but today's experiments are putting huge pressure on the old ways, so Declan Butler weighs up the pros and cons of electronic alternatives.

Abstract

Record-keeping in the lab has stayed unchanged for hundreds of years, but today's experiments are putting huge pressure on the old ways. Declan Butler weighs up the pros and cons of electronic alternatives to that dog-eared notebook. The ‘paperless lab’ seemed weeks away once, some time in the 1990s. But the prospect receded and labs everywhere are now struggling with an explosion of data. An electronic version of the lab notebook can fully integrate with all these digital data and images, but many researchers still print their gels and data tables, and glue them into a notebook. But we have the technology. The replacement for the trusty lab notebook could be weeks away.