I scribble notes on a pad when I conduct interviews for my business. I don’t write many words because I’m trying to understand what people are saying and can’t write and think at the same time. (Half-Polish, can’t chew gum either). My notes are becoming more difficult to reread after a period of time too because my handwriting skills have diminished. Except for my grocery shopping list, I rarely use paper Post Its anymore, preferring electronic versions that are available on most newer PCs and phones. Like most people with Smart phones, I take out mine out frequently so see the reminders often. So this approach works well for me. I do have a paper scribble pad (recycled paper!) that I use every day with a pencil to capture transient bits of information that I use during the day. I throw out the scribbles next day and start a new sheet. This is still more efficient and convenient than a computer based approach.

The way that we read information to acquire knowledge has been gradually transforming. Before electronics, brief communication of information (today’s tweets, text messages or emails) was commonly done via oral interaction or sign images like smoke signals, semaphores, etc. The telegraph and telephone replaced these and has broadened the potential audience. Global electronic networks are the phase that we are in now. These kinds of communications usually only convey relatively small bits of information or knowledge. Think about trying to get a university degree by only reading tweets and text messages. That’s not going to get it done.

The applicability of collaborative space has been spotty. There are some specific successes, but in general this idea has not expanded significantly over the past 20 years. Remember Lotus Notes?

Conveying more complex concepts and ideas, requires a much more structured use of many words than these communication vehicles can easily provide. Most people scan through pages bought up by web search results looking for key words of phrases. They rarely read a page word by word.

So what’s the best medium to read a book or long document? I can tolerate reading no more than 3 pages max word for word on my PC screen. Some days, like today, it’s less than one page. It’s the screen angle and overall brightness that gets to me. You can carry around and tilt paper pages, books and eReaders to accommodate your sitting or standing position. Also, most eReaders have the capability of increasing font size which I often do when my eyes get tired at the end of a day. They also are not overly bright, but have good black/white contrast. Most models can’t be read in the dark. I often print a few pages of information to read and then reuse the paper for scribbling. I don’t keep the printed sheets for very long.

I print fewer items to read than I did last year and think that this is because I am scanning, skimming speed reading more. Everyone seems to be doing this and I’m not sure whether it is good or bad. Are we learning less and just recycling information more?

When paper was king, I read many articles and books word for word then composed my original work. I’m sure I plagiarized some things without giving credit to the proper author, but I (as do many university professors) are seeing many articles, blogs and white papers that are primarily information that has been cut and pasted from other sources and advertised as “original” work.

I think that we have to be more selective in the use of our time to acquire new knowledge. Texting, tweeting, information skimming, social networking and other activities can take away too many hours every day and inhibit our capability to compose original ideas.

Electronic Lab Notebooks / Lab Information Management Systems
Labtronics Inc. has released a Connector for Nexxis ELN that allows the Electronic Laboratory Notebook to connect to any LIMS.
Nexxis ELN makes use of the industry standard integration tool, LimsLink, to provide direct connection with any LIMS. The connection provides bi-directional connectivity allowing the Electronic Notebook to retrieve sample lists from LIMS and report results back to LIMS

All three posts serve as a timely reminder that there are basic skills in some of the processes that we try to automate or computerise, and no amount of slick software can replace that. But there were a few other points in the blog posts that could raise eyebrows. I’m totally impressed by Tim Ferriss’ organisational skills and habits with paper notebooks, but there’s a lot of us who aren’t in his league. And when it comes to any requirement for sharing….I have to conclude that Tim’s notebooks are for his eyes only.

The other point that caught my attention was in Jill Hubbard Bowman’s post, which contains some great advice on recording and maintaining intellectual property; Jill made the point that ‘Courts don’t trust electronic documents’. Well, this seems to run contradictory to a lot of the advice Lawyers and Patent Attorneys are passing on in organisations where paper lab notebooks are being replaced with electronic lab notebooks. Since courts make decisions based on evidence, it is the relevance, integrity and authenticity of the evidence, not the medium, that determine trustworthiness. Of course, the approach with digital records is different to that with paper records, but courts in the US and Western Europe are quite comfortable with electronic records, to the extent that most major pharmaceutical companies have switched to fully electronic records for their scientific IP. But it does mean that a robust and reliable process for managing electronic records, able to stand up to the court’s scrutiny, is essential. This throws a lot of emphasis on the underlying process; so the advice given in Jill’s post is very valid.

Here’s a couple of links to relevant posts on this site:
Good Laboratory Notebook Practice
Legal Issues of ELNs

Here‘s an interesting article about using a framework on top of MOSS that allows usage within laboratories.  It has the benefit of using tools scientists are used to: Word and Excel.  This framework should be made available as an open source to everyone soon.  Great news!

One of the more significant stories has been the problems with the NASA records from the early space program.   I came across this article The lost NASA tapes: Restoring lunar images after 40 years in the vault which describes some of the superhuman effort involved in reclaiming important data that may otherwise be lost forever.  The data may probably be a bit more significant than some of the stuff we have in our labs, but who knows?  But this is exactly the scenario that a good records management process and a good records’ manager has to save us from.  If Records Managers become the heroes of the 21st century, so be it!

The NASA story makes interesting reading and raises the question ‘it couldn’t happen to us, could it?’  An earlier item from Charlie Sodano  Getting Started with Records Management, was posted to draw attention to the problems and how to make a start on solving it.  And the big question is, how ready are we now?  It’s not unusual to come across surveys quoting the number of companies who feel they have a robust records management strategy in place being frighteningly low.  Unfortunately, investing in records management doesn’t show a plus on the bottom line…..but if disaster strikes, then it can prevent a very big minus.  Just like buying an insurance policy, really.

I recall one experience many years ago where a team of users spent months defining requirements for a document management system. The lengthy list was passed to the designer who didn’t participate on the requirements team. After a few more months, he surfaced and presented his prototype “solution”. It was awful. All of our requirements were in there somewhere, but navigation within the software was not intuitive or reflective of how the users worked. The product launched but was shunned by the user community.
What went wrong? The users described in intricate detail what they wanted the software to do. The designer used the most advanced programming techniques that delivered the requirements. You all know the answer – here is more to know than user requirements. There was no dialog.
I once bought a house before it was built based on some drawings. Looked good on paper, but the kitchen turned out to be too narrow for me and my wife to use simultaneously. The builder was not a cook.
There are perceptions about what certain categories of software deliver. We all have an idea about the core functionality of ELN’s, LIMS and Document Management software. They are each quite distinctive. Problems arise when additional “user requirements” are heaped up on top of the core functionality. The result is something like you see in many modern cell phones. The phone functionality is often difficult to use because of the camera, web browser, email, GPS, etc. I’ve been carrying around pocket sized devices for many years. My current collection consists of a phone, camera and ebook reader. You can’t effectively cram a good camera and ebook reader into a phone. And yes I do use my phone to occasionally take pictures and read the New York Times. However, it is a poor substitute for a dedicated device.

There is a trend among several vendors to make ELN’s more LIMS like and to have bolt on ELN functionality onto a LIMS system. Others are trying to build in more advanced scientific computing abilities into their ELN’s and LIMS. Perhaps it would be better to buy 2 or 3 products that have strong core capabilities rather than buy one that has more limited functionality. It is worthwhile to consider this alternative.
I was part of a team in a food analysis laboratory that launched a LIMS system in the late 70’s using a time shared computer. The sample submission, basic calculating and result reporting worked fine. We had an aggressive programmer who kept adding on additional functionality, such as an ELN and advanced computing techniques. It seemed to be a good idea at first, but when we found better, more specialized computational and ELN solutions, the LIMS regressed back into a very nice LIMS.