Electronic Notebooks

Like the ubiquitous paper notebook, electronic notebooks allow researchers to make a record of their experiments: their ideas, discussions, experimental data and results, future plans, etc. An electronic notebook moves this vital resource out of the physical laboratory and allows remote colleagues to both view, and add to, the experimental record. ENs also have the potential to improve productivity by providing capabilities not available in paper notebooks. The goal of this project is to develop electronic notebooks that allow researchers to record and share scientific information easily across distances.

The objectives of this project are

• Design a modular, extensible, notebook architecture and define a base set of notebook functionality.
• Develop reference notebook implementations and make them available to interested collaboratory efforts across DOE.
• Demonstrate architectural flexibility via connection to different databases and the use of different presentation metaphors.
• Show interoperability between architecturally compliant notebook systems within the base functionality.
• Demonstrate a set of common input and display tools for notebook systems.
• Compare and evaluate different notebook interface designs.
• Support active scientific research collaborations in existing/developing collaboratories.

For more info, see:

• Project status (May 2000)
• Project review (May 2000)
• Electronic Notebook Project