Electronic Notebook

Over the last few years electronic notebooks have become very popular, and they are the electronic replacement for paper notebooks. You no longer have to record your notes, sketches, images, equations, signature or graphs on traditional paper; all you need to do is transfer them to your electronic notebook.

The great thing about the electronic notebook is that you can read from it and navigate it in the same manner as the paper notebook. You no longer need to write or sketch with a pen; information is added to your electronic notebook via the computer by using input devices such as scientific instruments, microphone, image files, mouse sketchpads and the keyboard. The primary difference between a traditional notebook and an electronic notebook is that they look and feel different; however, they both share the same fundamental functions.

The scientific community is known to use paper notebooks over the years to record information. The information that paper notebooks are used to record include:

Drawing tables

Recording information on all pages

Dating every entry

Taping in sheets of paper such as computer outputs, graphs, photos and figures.

Making sketches

Designers of electronic notebooks need to have a good understanding of these methods in order to create notebooks that the scientific community can use just as they use their paper notebooks. Any electronic notebook that is too complicated to use, will not be popular among the scientific community or among the general public for that matter.

The notebook is now being made into an instrument that engineers and scientists can use during their collaborations and experimentations. Scientists and engineers need to be able to use the electronic notebook in the same way in which they use the paper notebook; however, the electronic notebook should make recording vital information easier for them. The electronic notebook should also be a way that scientists can use to check past, present and future usage schedules for various experiments.

Researchers, who need to remotely record results of experiments that take place at research facilities, can do so by using an electronic notebook. But they can also use the electronic notebook to do other things than just record the results of experiments. Notebooks can be used to document single projects that can then be shared by collaborators within a group, or they can be used to record personal and private information.

The advantages that an electronic notebook has over a traditional paper notebook include:

You can include hyperlinks that lead to other information

You can include video and audio clips

You can easily locate information using the search feature

You’ll find it easier to include computer files

Once you back up the information, it cannot be accidentally destroyed, lost or misplaced

You can access information remotely

You can share the information with others

Links:

Electronic Tablet

Electronic Organizer