Last week, LabArchives team members Debbie Cole and Hannah Clark visited our users at Duke University for a one day intensive workshop.

This workshop ‘Promoting Better Research through Data Management with LabArchives’ started as an in-house idea and soon became a collaboration between LabArchives and Duke’s ASIST Office (Advancing Scientific Integrity, Services and Training).

Rebecca Beerman, Raul Doyle and Kindra King from the ASIST Office worked with Debbie and Hannah to bring Duke users a day full of collaboration and learning.

Highlights from the morning included:

• Background on Duke’s decision to roll out LabArchives electronic lab notebook (ELN)
• A discussion on research data management in the digital age
• A user panel on transitioning from paper to digital notebooks

After lunch, users attended either an introductory training or an advanced training on building widgets and templates. From there, the group reconvened for a user feedback session and information on new features.

The user panel included researchers from Duke’s Molecular Genetics, Microbiology and Medicine programs, from UNC’s HIV Cure Center and from NC State’s Biotechnology program.

The attendees included 65 researchers, students, faculty members and librarians. Here’s what they thought about the day:

“It would be great to have another conference in a few months. As a new user, it was great to learn how others are using the software and after beginning to implement it in our group, it would be great to be able to go back for the advanced widget session.”

“My organization has not decided on an ELN product yet, but this conference was very helpful in highlighting important aspects of LabArchives and ELN products in general.”

“I think this meeting was a great start toward forming a community in our area. I imagine it is a lot of work to organize, but I think it would be nice to continue to meet in this way, perhaps annually.”