Electronic Laboratory Notebook (PNNL software)

Electronic Laboratory Notebook

Developer(s)	Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Initial release	March 10, 2002 (2002-03-10) (4.6)
Discontinued	5.2.2 / September 9, 2008 (2008-09-09)
Written in	Java, Perl
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	English
Type	Electronic laboratory notebooks Laboratory informatics software
License(s)	Open Source License
Website	collaboratory.emsl.pnl.gov

Electronic Laboratory Notebook or ELN was a free open-source electronic laboratory notebook developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. Project funding for the software ended in the winter of 2007, and development was discontinued by PNNL. The open-source software can still be found on SourceForge, the latest client version 5.2.2 released in September 2008.

Product history

The Electronic Laboratory Notebook "was developed as part of a three-way collaboration between researchers at [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory], Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's DOE2000 collaboratory program." It's not entirely clear when that Department of Energy (DOE) project began, though the project page seems to indicate work likely began in 1997 or earlier, as a demonstration of the software was given to then Vice President Al Gore on January 21, 1998. The primary goals of the project were to design an extensible ELN architecture with a base set of functionality and to develop implementations of the software for collaboratory partners across the DOE.

By June 2001, the ELN software was up to version 4.5, and entities like the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Columbia University Environmental Molecular Sciences Institute were utilizing the software. On January 10, 2002, an open-source project for the ELN software appeared on SourceForge, and the first open-source release of the software occurred two months later as version 4.6.

Development continued on the software until the winter of 2007, when project funding ceased. Though development by the collaboration was discontinued, the source code remained on SourceForge, and one more update arrived in September 2008 as version 5.2.2.

Features

The main features of Electronic Laboratory Notebook include:

• table of contents
• expand and collapse entries
• search tools
• notes and attachments
• image and text editors
• equation editor
• user-based access
• web-based

Hardware/software requirements

Installation requirements for Electronic Laboratory Notebook include:

• SAM ELN 2.1 Server
• any web browser with Java 1.4+ plugins enabled

Installation instructions for ELN can be found here. Installation instructions for SAM can be found here.

Videos, screenshots, and other media

• Tutorial videos for Electronic Laboratory Notebook can be found on the PNNL site.
• Documentation for Electronic Laboratory Notebook is located here.

Further reading

• Myers, James D.; Mendoza, Elena S.; Hoopes, Bonnie (2001). Hamza, M. H. ed. "A Collaborative Electronic Laboratory Notebook" (PDF). Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference, Internet and Multimedia Systems and Applications, August 13-16, 2001, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA (ACTA Press): 334–338. ISBN 0889862990. http://pdf.aminer.org/000/877/371/computational_experiments_using_distributed_tools_in_a_web_based_electronic.pdf. 

External links

• DOE2000 Electronic Laboratory Notebook project