The subject of electronic lab notebooks is on the agenda for the first data lunch
Designed in partnership with researchers and organized by Université de Lyon 1 BU, the Datacc’ project brought together some 30 participants from 12 laboratories on Tuesday 17 December at an innovative informal meeting.
Discussion at the first data lunch largely featured two participants convinced by the use of electronic lab notebooks: Thierry Billard, research director, researcher in chemistry at the ICBMS and the CERMEP and Judith Fresquet, research engineer at Inserm.
The meeting was an opportunity to discuss lab practices which are still largely dependent on paper notebooks. Despite being convenient, they are not ideal for sharing, reuse, conservation and information search.
Two tools were presented in detail: the Labguru solution developed by the company BioData, based in the USA and Israel. Some Inserm laboratories selected this tool after testing several software products. In Mr. Billard’s team, a home-made solution called iLabChem and coded with Mac is used. It has most functions expected of a chemistry electronic workbook: reaction drawing tool, search by chemical structure, option to attach files such as photos or datasets, interface with external tools, etc.
This meeting was the first step before launching tests early in 2020 involving a sample of voluntary researchers from several laboratories interested in the use of electronic notebooks.
Comments