IGEM:Instructions on starting a lab notebook

Many of the teams and individuals participating in iGEM are maintaining an online lab notebook. Here's a quick page describing how to do so easily on OpenWetWare.

Naming

Given that there are several lab notebooks on OWW and that every article in OWW must have a unique name, it helps to name your lab notebook such that it tells everyone else that it's yours. That way, others know to respect those pages (i.e. not edit them). It also prevents clashing of different lab notebooks.

If you are starting your own personal lab notebook, name it according to your username. For instance, User:OWWusername/Notebook.

If the entire iGEM team is sharing a lab notebook, name it according to your institution and the year. For instance, iGEM:MIT/2006/Notebook.

Starting a notebook

One easy way of starting a lab notebook is via the calendar extension in OWW. It will autogenerate links to all the days of a month.

Add the code below to your primary notebook page. Be sure and replace iGEM:MIT/2006/Notebook with your own notebook name.

<calendar>
name=iGEM:MIT/2006/Notebook
date=2006/07/01
view=threemonths
format=%name/%year-%month-%day
weekstart=7
</calendar>

<calendar>
name=iGEM:MIT/2006/Notebook
date=2006/10/01
view=threemonths
format=%name/%year-%month-%day
weekstart=7
</calendar>

Using this approach has several advantages including

1. All the links will have the same naming convention. This reduces the likelihood of inconsistent naming and makes it easier to find other pages.
2. Navigating between notebook pages is easy. Each notebook page will include a backlink to the main notebook page and the main notebook page will link to everything.
3. You won't have to make all the links by hand, they are all autogenerated for you.

Examples

To see an example of what such a notebook looks like, visit the 2006 MIT iGEM team's notebook.

Other approaches

This approach to maintaining a lab notebook may not work for you. You're free to use other approaches, but please follow name your notebook pages in such a way that they are easily identifiable as yours. It helps to make it obvious to everyone which pages they should and should not edit.

To see more fo what the Calendar extension can do, visit the calendar template.