Reading a novel, which I'll probably review after I finish it.
Has a lab explosion, which doesn't quite follow the trope of "experiment blows up, inventor killed, all notes lost, subplot wrapped up neatly." But it calls the trope to mind.
And I think back to the early days of my stint in Corporateland, and my thought that there really should be a system for keeping electronic lab books. At the time, this would have involved a Java client, and all the awkwardness that entails; in the modern world of HTML5 and such, all the client-side stuff could be handled in the browser proper.
And it would enable project-level lab books with multiple engineers participating, and that kind of good stuff.
The original concept involved keeping the data in-house, on the corporate server. But... why not (along the lines of paid repository hosting) have a lab-book hosting service, at a site entirely separate from anyone's lab? With some sort of off-off-site backups, of course.
And: another note for the open-source not-LabVIEW that I keep meaning to write (or any such thing that anyone is writing): include the capability of streaming results directly to a server, whether on- or off-site. Preferably, have some way to integrate with an on-line lab-book system.
So, when the lab blows up, or burns down, or is devoured by the Great Old Ones... all the notes are stored safely on a server in a distant location, along with data up to the final moment.
As a service, this would require some policy options, such as a designated heir to the project, release to public if the owner doesn't check in for some specified interval, etc. Just so the work isn't permanently lost when an experiment in applied theology unexpectedly succeeds.
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