Which antibody did you use?
- Use the Materials form to enter inventory items, and track them through discovery, ordering, receiving, storage, use, and disposal
- Different identified users can implement each of these steps
- Track Materials expenditures from different accounts
- Storage locations can be specified for each item
- Reorders of the same item are easily managed without the need for data re-entry
- Critical items, even down to the specific lot number, can be associated with any experiment by selection on the Experiments form
- Generate Reports for regulatory agencies of your inventory of Materials of a particular category
Accurate association of Materials with Experiments is essential for understanding how results can sometimes vary between experimental replicates
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How did you do that?
- Use the Methods form to enter Methods, organized by Category, Method and Version
- Versions enable tracking of how a Method may be modified over time, and by different users
- Method version records include multiple fields for links to documents
- Method versions can be associated with any experiment by selection on the Experiments form
- Reorders of the same item are easily managed without the need for data re-entry
Accurate association of Methods with Experiments is essential for understanding how results can sometimes vary between experimental replicates
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Investigations and Projects:
- Investigations are the highest level of organization, perhaps a grant title or a specific area of investigation
- Projects are defined under an Investigation, and could for example be a specific aim of a grant
- The Principal Investigator sets Investigations and Projects, and assigns user permissions to each
- Users then only see the Investigations and Projects on the Switchboard form that they are permitted to see
- Experiments viewed from the Switchboard form are then specific for the Project selected
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Who did what?
- A major feature of labElephant is how it facilitates the management of lab personnel by the Principal Investigator
- All lab personnel are entered into labElephant as users on the People form by the PI, or by a user with PI privileges
- Each user sets their own password, digital signature image, and email address in order to use labElephant, for optimal function and compliance enforcement
- Entries by users on the Knowledge form are private to the user, unless the user has granted privileges to others on the People form
- Entries by a user on the Experiments form are publicly visible to all users granted access to the Project by the PI, but any changes made show up in the audit trail
- Each user can easily see if they have bad or expired links to data, which greatly facilitates their maintenance of data integrity
- The PI can easily see which users have bad or expired links to data, which greatly facilitates the enforcement of data integrity
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Ideal for monitoring student progress
- With one click pull up all the experiments done by a selected student
- View how each student understands and evaluates the experiments they are doing
- View how each student understands and evaluates the papers they are reading
- Easily ensure that each student is monitoring the integrity of data location
- The PI can then easily find the data of each student, before and after they depart
- Portability: The PI can create a user-specific copy of the labElephant back end database for when the student leaves
- Along with a copy of the user folder on the lab drive, this enables a departing student to find all their old data
- Portability gives students incentive to enter data
LAN based, but remote access capable:
- Local Area Networks (LANs) keep your data in-house and under your control
- On a LAN, the back end (BE) of labElephant is on your lab drive on the LAN, and a front end (FE) of labElephant is on each user computer
- labElephant will also function with remote access, via (e.g.) Citrix server, if Microsoft Office is installed on Citrix Server, with a FE in each user folder
- While labElephant can be used on a single computer, the most useful configuration for multiple users is on a LAN
- If your lab data is already on a LAN, on a lab drive, then adoption of labElephant is a breeze!
- Portability: Because the only requirement for labElephant is Microsoft Office on a Windows computer, the PI is not tied to an institutional ELN choice
- A copy of the old lab folder on the lab drive enables the PI to find all the data from their old lab, in their new location