There have been a few conversations around this -- JCB uses WikiSpaces, Cam uses homebrew blog/wiki, and iirc a couple others were suggested but that's about it. - Bill Hooker

Bill is right - I'm still an advocate of the general purpose wiki (Wikispaces in my case) for an online lab notebook. I know it isn't sexy and doesn't seem "cutting edge" but what is does well is let us represent pretty much whatever we need to record for experiments with the fewest assumptions. It is BECAUSE it is like paper that it works. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Jean-Claude: I noticed MediaWiki has some "forms" extensions, where users can create forms which fill out a template (like Semantic Forms). If this was simple enough to use, do you think this could be good hybrid approach between free-form and structured data in a wiki-based ELN ? For example, the powerusers could build forms+templates for standard experiments, which everyone could use. Extra data could be added to the wiki page after it was created from the forms+template. - Andrew Perry

There is one very good example of a Wiki-based production quality LIMS system (I haven't used it, but know folks who've taken a look at it). That's the WikiLims system from BioTeam ... so it's definitely doable http://blog.bioteam.net/tag... - Deepak Singh

That's definitely one of the plus points of MediaWiki. It seems fairly extensible - Deepak Singh

Most of you know I'm part of the OWW team. So let me ask this question: Those that have used or seen OWW's lab notebook, what would you like to see added (or removed!) from it to make it more to your liking? As it has been said, MW is extensible and we are getting good at extending it, so let me know what you'd like and we can see what's possible. - Ricardo Vidal

I only keep a ELN. It's closed ;-0 It's dokuwiki install with a few modifications and plugins. As I spend all my time at the computer I have found this a lot better than writing/printing/cutting/pasting. I started of using mediawiki but had problems getting the 3rd party plugins (gnuplot, math etc.) to function. 2 of 12 in our lab use an ELN fulltime. I'm unsure of the Universities policy on ELN's, but i'm not concerned given that 2 Masters students just submitted without keeping any formal documentation. - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

The other thing I like about the wiki is the discussion page. Supervisors/PI's can read and make comments at their own leisure. I would love to have "virtual meetings" on my ELN - that way when it comes up "what ! you did it that way !?!?!" "But we spoke about that.." "No we didn't..." situations are eliminated. - Mitchell J Stanton-Cook

Neil: What about those of us absolutely unable to "code up your own web app" in any language at all? We need someone to make those templates for us... - Heather

Ricardo: I definitely would like the content of each lab notebook *entry* to be searchable. For some reason, this <sitesearch>title=Search this Project</sitesearch> only seems to search within the page titles, at least for me. I'd also like a way to make image entry possible from within the pages one is editing (ie. a notebook page), the way Wordpress does when you are making a blog post. I might be asking for the moon... - Heather

@Ricardo: I signed up for a lab notebook just to play with it (my boss is very conservative, I can't use it for anything real...yet) and managed to break it by including an apostrophe in my "lab" name. I got email from the dude who looks after the notebooks, but he never did get around to fixing what I messed up... - Bill Hooker

Andrew - in a sense we use "templates" on the Wikispaces notebook since students often copy a previous similar experiment and delete the unrelated stuff. - Jean-Claude Bradley

Mitchell - one of my favorite features on the online notebook is being able to point out problems or ask questions directly on the page in bold and italics. When the students address the issues they can remove my comment. I have found this to be much more useful than the discussion tool since it is much harder to point to the exact section in the text. - Jean-Claude Bradley

@Bill I'll fix it up and let you know via email. - Ricardo Vidal

@Heather I believe that the search is working properly. It performs a restricted search within your lab notebook. As for the images, you can add images inside but I see what you are looking for. It is totally possible and I'll suggest it to be implemented :-) - Ricardo Vidal

Sorry to trouble you, but I don't get why it doesn't. Not browser-dependent... for example, if I search http://www.openwetware.org/wiki... for the string "Sophie", I get this message: There is no page titled "Sophie +"Etchevers:Notebook/Genomics of hNCC" -"Lab Notebook"". - Heather

@Heather, you are right. It was buggy and we're fixing it. MW's search sucks and we're making it better via Google. It should be working better later today. - Ricardo Vidal

Thanks Ricardo. No hurry, mind you, since I'll only be playing. But of all the ELNs I've looked at, OWW is the only one that comes with a community, so I'd really like to give it a good workout before considering others. - Bill Hooker

@Bill, I'll let you know once your playground notebook is fixed. Meanwhile, you can fool around with this demo one: http://openwetware.org/wiki... - Ricardo Vidal

I realise I'm way late on this but I thought I'd add my two pieces. Our approach is blog based and (we think) neatly solves the problem of the issue of 'free text' via form based input by enabling users to set up templates using the standard markup language with some wildcards in it. I desperately need to do some screen casts of how this works but you can see some of it in the talk I gave at Drexel last year (http://drexel-coas-talks-mp3-p...). - Cameron Neylon

This enables the non power user to easily set up templates that then generate forms that can be filled in. Our user interface is ropey at the moment and as Bill points out we don't have a community using this as yet but we're working on both of those! - Cameron Neylon

I used Wordpress for a couple of years - would probably use that or Drupal (for structured entries) nowadays. - _alf

There are some free ELN's out there but you get what you pay for. I work for Rescentris Inc who make CERF, the only ELN that is both Mac and Windows compatible and fully 21 CFR 11 compliant. Obviously I am biased, but we believe our product is the best. CERF is infinitely flexible, extensible, and customizable. Check it out at www.rescentris.com - Rob Day

Rob you're absolutely right! People should pay for great service and access to knowledge, not the right to use software... We use both models under a dual license. http://www.biorails.org/ - Andrew Lemon