Introduction
In 2018, the NIH Library Data Services team conducted a comprehensive review of electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) to understand how they have been used to date and to potentially support their use by the NIH community. This guide serves as a synthesis of the review and is organized into the following sections:
-
What are Electronic Lab Notebooks?
-
Selecting and Implementing an Electronic Lab Notebook
-
ELNs at NIH
What are Electronic Lab Notebooks?
An ELN is a software tool that functions like a paper lab notebook. ELNs have a number of advantages when compared to paper lab notebooks:
-
Allows data to be entered electronically
-
Supports transparency and reproducibility
-
Supports the development of workflows
-
Supports version control
-
Provides support for rights management