To provide yourself with a complete record of why experiments were initiated and how they were performed. Your notebook also gives you a place to put the reams of data you collect and a place to paste the statistical outcomes and graphs that are generated from your analyses. Researchers who distribute their efforts across multiple notebooks, computer files, 3-ring binders, Post-Its, and faulty brain cells are unlikely to be effective in the laboratory.
To encourage sound thinking. Keeping a notebook gives you a forum to talk to yourself, to ask questions, to jot down important thoughts and comments about the experimental design and how your results might eventually be interpreted.
To provide information to a person who is interested in continuing your research project. Other or future members of the laboratory may want to repeat and extend your experimentation if you die an early death, so you want a complete record of procedures, reagents, data, and thoughts to pass on to them. Notebooks that are kept solely for personal consumption are often illegible and incoherent (usually both) and are worthless to the broader scientific community.
To get rich. Not everyone sets out with the goal of patenting a process or contraption, but you might stumble onto something important and in such an event you must have a notebook that supports your claims. If you have not kept up a proper laboratory notebook, other researchers and their patent lawyers will beat you to the Patent Office and to the bank.
What to use as a laboratory notebook:
Purchase a notebook that possesses a stitched (not glued) binding. Spiral-bound notebooks are undesirable because it is too easy (and to tempting, really) to rip out pages in the event of an error. Ring binders, manila envelopes, and stacks of loose paper are equally unacceptable.
Some laboratory notebooks have a "carbon copy" function that allows a duplicated sheet to be created and then removed to a second, safer location. These notebooks encourage bad notebook procedures and should be avoided. A proper notebook has a lot of glued-in information (printed graphs, datasheet templates, photographs, product labels, etc.) that simply will not show up on the sheet below, so the "carbon copy" notebooks are only good for archiving written entries. If you want a backup copy of your notebook, make a daily date with a Xerox machine. For the truly motivated and/or paranoid, note that you can periodically archive your pages with a scanner or (most easily) with a digital camera; then you can concatenate the compressed image files into a single PDF, then burn onto a CD.
Notebooks come in a variety of dimensions. The larger ones (those larger than a standard page) are convenient because you can easily paste in printer output without much file manipulation (e.g., no font shrinking). Smaller notebooks cannot accommodate unmodified printouts, but are much easier to lug around in field conditions.
More expensive notebooks have much nicer paper, so if you like a smooth, non-fibrous surface to write on, spend the extra money.
Also spend the extra money for a notebook that has pre-numbered pages.
If your parents are springing for the notebook, you might opt for the really, really expensive variety that lays completely flat when open. It's a small thing, but it grows on you.
Here are some companies that sell laboratory notebooks:
Put your full name and year of use on exterior of notebook. This information can also be placed on the spine (use a light-colored paint pen if the spine is black) so that your notebook can easily be identified on a shelf.
Put a general project name (or course name) on the exterior of notebook.
Put your mailing address, phone number, and e-mail on front or on inside cover. Also give the name of your mentor, and his/her full mailing/contact information (including building and room number). This information is very useful when you foolishly leave your notebook at Starbucks.
How to start and maintain a laboratory notebook:
If your notebook is not already equipped with page numbers, add them (in top right- and left-hand corners).
Devote pages 1 and 2 to a Table of Contents (which you will fill in as time passes). Have 2 columns, one for experiment name and one for page number where experiment 1 starts, etc. If you come back to your notebook after 20 years, you will be able to quickly find the appropriate section of your notebook. This Table of Content is also crucial for others that might want to use the notebook to reconstruct your activities.
Never, under any circumstance, should you remove a page. This rule is to prevent unscrupulous researchers from "losing" data that might not have been favorable to their research objectives. If you rip out some pages you thought were unnecessary (or had unfavorable caricatures of your mentor), colleagues might view the gaps as suspicious.
Some researchers insist on reserving the left-hand page for "cryptic notes to self, and quick calculations", and the right-hand page for "real" entries. Do not do this. This strategy undermines the more important goal of keeping a notebook that is truly dechipherable by others. If you have made "calculations and notes to self" without proper narrative explanation and justification, you, too, will probably find the left-hand page unusable after several months have elapsed.
Many pens bleed when wet, and you should avoid using them in the laboratory where spills invariably occur. I did a quick experiment to demonstrate this (e.g., soaking in methanol), and to determine which pens are satisfactory for keeping a notebook. The results are in the figure below:
The following pens seem to perform well under the conditions I used: Pentel Hybrid Gel Roller, Sakura Gelly Roll (this company also makes Pigma Micron pens, which are great), Sanford Uni-Ball Gel RT, Sanford Uni-Ball Vision, Sanford Uni-Gel RT, Zebra Sarasa (this writes this best, and comes in a pleasing "blue/black" tint).
Avoid the "Pilot G2" line (they bleed extensively in all organic solvents tests, and even bled when incubated with warm water. Do not use Sharpie (or equivalent) permanent markers for notebook entries: these markers are very good at resisting water spills, but are removed by many solvents. More importantly, permanent markers typically bleed through to the underlying page, which makes for rather sloppy, illegible laboratory notebooks. Do not use pencils. Although graphite is wonderfully resistant to many solvents, it is famously prone to being erased, which can be terrible if you erase something that, in fact, was rather important. Also, if you decide to patent a thought or protocol, you need to show the laboratory notebook to the patent office, and they will laugh their heads off if you show up with a pencil-filled notebook. Do not use felt tip, fountain, and ball point pens. The first two almost invariably have very water soluble inks, and you will lose data (or at least legibility) after a beverage spill, drool accident, or a rain shower (for those in the field). Ball points, despite heated opinions to contrary by many researchers, are absolutely terrible at resisting most solvents and smears. If you're mentor insists on ballpoints, ask to see the data.
If you are a fountain pen addict like I am, you CAN use your pen in the laboratory IF you buy yourself Bulletproof Black ink from Noodler's. I haven't tested it extensively, but it seems to be fabulous, and is actually guaranteed to be permanent. (The company also makes invisible ink as well as ink that flows even when it's really, really cold outside.)
If you make a mistake, draw a thin line through the word or number rather than obliterating the entry with an ink blob. In some cases you may decide that your original entry was, indeed, the correct one, and you will be glad that you can still read it.
For the same reason, never use correction fluids (e.g., White Out) or strips of white laboratory tape.
Write legibly! If you ever use your laboratory notebook to reconstruct experimental details for use in a manuscript, poster, or seminar presentation, you will be miserable if you haven't been reasonably neat. Your notebook does not have to be a work of art, but it should be easily readable by another biologist.
Provide the full date whenever you make an entry. Avoid 02/2/02 and 2/2/02 type dates, just in case your laboratory has a mix of Americans ("month/day/year" types) and Europeans ("day/month/year" types). Opt for a format that leaves nothing to guesswork: 2 Feb 2002; Feb 2, 2002; or 2/II/2002.
What should go into your notebook:
Include detailed notes on all discussions and thoughts on the experimental goals. This means, of course, that you should start making dated entries immediately rather than waiting until you get your experiment(s) started. Because some information might come via e-mailed suggestions (from your mentor or colleagues) or from online sources (PDFs or web sites), you might paste "miniaturized" versions of relevant passages directly into your notebook (rather than spending the time to transcribe).
Eventually, include detailed experimental protocols that could be easily followed by another researcher. If you have typed out a detailed protocol in a computer file, print it out (shrinking it to make it fit nicely) and glue it into your notebook (it is worthless if you file it elsewhere). Give each experiment a name so that you can refer to it quickly in subsequent entries. All experimental protocols should be accompanied with clearly worded hypotheses and goals, and indicate exactly what measurements are going to be taken.
Provide full justification of all experimental details (species used, temperature, reagents, etc.). Justification might come as simple logic (stated, in your own words) or as references to other published research (e.g., voltages applied as per Frankenstein 1899, with full citation given).
Annotate all calculations so that all numbers, concentrations, etc. are fully explained and would be interpretable by another researcher. Remember to include units.
Give full details for all experimental organisms. Who provided seeds, plasmids, etc., and what information did they transmit? Were seeds the result of open pollination, or were they from controlled crosses? Have lines used been subjected to thousands of generations of laboratory conditions or are they truly a wild strain? If you bought organism, give source, delivery conditions, etc. Include catalog number (e.g., Burpee LE-23001) when possible.
For greenhouse experiments, write down details of potting media (brand, type) and pot (shape, dimensions, color, brand). Also record when plants were watered, fertilized, repotted, or repositioned. If other people are asked to care for your plants, ask person to keep a detailed log of when plants were watered and fertilized (this log often helps ensure that promised care actually takes place, too!).
Record reagent details. Details include vendor (name, address, phone number; in case you want to buy more in the future) and product information (brand, product number, chemical structure, purity grade, lot number, date of mixing/production, expiration date, etc.). Whenever water is used, specify de-ionized, distilled, tap, cold, hot, sterile, etc.
Record equipment details (brand, model number, sensitivity). In some circumstances it is important to record serial number, just in case there was something unique about the item you used. For growth chambers, always record bulb type and wattage.
Record field, greenhouse, laboratory, and growth chamber conditions such as temperature (in Celsius), humidity, barometric pressure, light levels, light/day cycle (hours of each, and when night starts), wind speed, wind direction, etc. Note that conditions sometimes change, so record these parameters often if variation is likely to affect your results.
Sometimes, personal information should be noted. If you are interested in observing behavior of nearby wounded bulls, it might be good to note whether you are wearing a red or green shirt. Similarly, behavior of carrion-eating flies might be inadvertently changed if you are releasing plumes of last night's bacon- and garlic-studded pork roast through your pores. Perfume choice should be noted if you observing animal sexual behaviors, of course.
Record names of people providing assistance with data collection, techniques, statistical advice, equipment loans, stipend support, supplies funds. Write this information down immediately so that you remember to include it in your future "acknowledgements" sections. Keep notes about phone conversations and e-mail interactions (I often just paste the printed e-mail directly into my notebook).
Make quick drawings of experiment set-ups, location of experiment in laboratory or greenhouse, etc. For field experiments, include a sketch of where field site is situated. These sketches do not have to be works of art.
Attach photographs (or print-outs of digital photographs) that document key experimental details.
On the day you first enter data into a statistical program, write down the file name and where the file is stored (e.g., DVD on shelf in room 101; backup on laboratory computer in "Backup folder"). Give your file an informative name (e.g., "Heat_exp1_3Mar2003.dat") rather than "experiment1.dat" or "stats_hell.dat."
Make daily entries, even if to say just "checked for mortality in Heat Exp 1; no mortality yet."
Specify purpose for each entry, and reference an experiment name. If you just wrote, "Censused" for a particular date, you wouldn't have a record of which experiment you censused or what specific data you were collecting.
If you happen to record some data directly onto datasheets (e.g., Excel spreadsheets that exist on computers or within ring binders), include dated entries for all such occasions: "entered data onto heat.xls spreadsheet." Ideally, construct your spreadsheets so that you can paste them into your notebook, perhaps right after your experimental details are explained: you could "mark" this page with a flag so that you can easily add data to these pages.
Detail all mistakes, problems with procedures, and lapses in data collection so that you can fully explain "odd" results at the end of your experiment.
Use AM/PM designations for all time entries.
All entries should be unobscured by attached graphs, data sheets, photographs, etc.
When you include datasheets, photographs, graphs, product labels, etc., use glue to cleanly and permanently attach all edges. Do not use staples (they poke through to the other side) and do not use tape (it becomes brittle and yellow).
Avoid making entries that are wholly unrelated to your project (e.g., "Don't forget to mail presents").
Include the full names and contact information for all collaborators (in courses, this translates to laboratory partners). You will sometimes have, "see X's notebook for further info," and these entries will only be useful to other researchers if there is good contact information at the start of a particular experiment.
At the conclusion of your experiment, or at the end of your course, write or print out a full directory of all electronic files that relate to your experiment. For Macintosh users, you could buy DiskTracker (shareware) to produce a full directory tree of your folder (or whatever): save directory listing as text file, then import into Excel (or other editor). Within Excel, you can add a column of explanatory text so that is clear what each file contains. All files, including digital photographs, should have appropriate, informative names and be stored within a relevant folder (e.g., don't put all images into an "images" folder, but rather file them in the appropriate "experiment folder"). Delete all unneeded data files, blurry images, letters to home, etc.: the final storage disk (or burned CD) should contain only the important files.
Describe the locations of all computer media, data binders, seeds, samples, etc., so that items can be located by others in the future. This information is best in tabular form (perhaps as an Excel or Word table printed and glued into your notebook). All seeds, DNA samples, etc. should be fully labeled with your name and date so that it is clear which notebook should be checked to learn more about the history of the sample.
Typically, the laboratory notebook should stay in the laboratory where the experiments were conducted (i.e., with your mentor or employer). If you can't part with it, make yourself a Xerox.
CONTENT COPYRIGHT 2003 COLIN PURRINGTON
Please send suggestions/comments on content and links to cpurrin1@swarthmore.edu.
![](http://www.swarthmore.edu/images/spacer.gif"){kind=spacer}
