I am looking for a good book on lab procedure, particularly note taking and data logging. Some of my employees in my lab great employees but are new to working in a lab setting. I want a good resource to help them learn lab procedure. I am constantly having them run experiments for R&D and obviously proper recording is essential. I remember having a lab manual when I took Organic Chemistry in college. I think something like that would be helpful for them.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
“The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual” is great. I read the third edition.
I’m still a bit undisciplined in my note taking myself, but I find audio notes tremendously helpful and even better than written note taking sometimes when shit is popping off everywhere and you can’t exactly take the time to write it all down but rather rely on memory when you get some down time. Of course, even audio notes need structure and context to consistently interpret what you were saying later. I’m thinking I need to go back through my recordings and put pen to paper though when I get a chance. If uni taught me anything, it’s that recording a lecture is great and all, but nothing beats hand written notes if you really need to beat something into your memory.
There are endless books but also I think this website would be helpful to many in the community.
I’m definitely not great, but I have had to do it in a formal, non-cannabis, research lab professionally, so I’m at least passable. I prefer written because it is way easier for me to open a lab notebook and look for something than to listen through audio note, particularly if they aren’t carefully curated.
I agree that class notes are way better than listening to lectures. I never attended lectures, or class in general if I could help it. I bought notes off of our students, read the textbook, and did great on tests.
I think that book is the same one I had in college. I bought a copy off Amazon last night. Thanks for the recommendation.
My videos I post all started as simply notes to myself in video format. With a quick video I can capture all the numbers and plus talk about what I am doing so as to recall for myself what I was doing. At first I used Notability on my iPad as well to take written notes. Then as I began posting the stuff I just changed up a bit to acknowledge others would be watching.
My suggestion for R&D is to just record the relavent parts into an app like Notability which I believe allows sharing between iPads as well. A picture is worth a thousand words and most folks these days need zero training on how to use apps. You just need a protocol to follow like always get the numbers in the shot and always explain what is being seen. You can easily write a simple procedure/protocol to capture all the data accurately. Just a thought. 