Laboratory notes in wiki form

Tracking the records of laboratory work, even a small one, could be quite disturbing. As time goes, a month, or more realistically many many months later, finding detailed description of an experiment could be challenging eventually evolving into Indiana Jones holy grail first-person game. During research years, as I have been focused in one topic for years, I was satisfied with plain text logs in LibreOffice Writer (or any text processor, at the University on Windows stations, or Slackware Linux @ home). Things dramatically changed when I have started working at the Institute of Public Health of Belgrade food analysis laboratory. The big difference among PhD research and extensively proccessive analytical laboratory work could be described like this:

• PhD thesis - plenty of time for thinking and planning experiments, before trying;
• food analysis laboratory - time-shortage, results-results-results, QA/QC for existing procedures, and if market demands, then develop new analytical procedures in some overtime after working hours.

In that environment innovative laboratory notes software is life-saving thing. Several programs fits all criteria, but ones that are industry standard as e-notebook from the PerkinElmar ChemBioOffice suite is extremely overdone with tons of functions and robustness, also propriety producing expenses. Without time for learning and accommodating new software technologies, I decided to give a chance to Zim desktop wiki and it turns into a great deal, it's really designed to fit for purpose!

Zim is free software developed in Python language, and it runs in any OS as long as you have Python3 and a few extra libraries. For all major systems there are installers, so as long as you're in mainstream, no-hacks needed. For others there are source code. The link is: https://zim-wiki.org/

This text deserves some graphics, so I'm adding three snapshots from my may/june experiments about quantifying several interesting indoles present in dietary supplements these days, utilizing quantitative-TLC. Only several lines (in Serbian, my native tongue) of text per experimental day as notes, but if it weren't logged, then I could spent a week again in puzzling and reinventing.

I don't want to tell anything more about the Zim, but if you are lazy to visit the link, there is short intro from Zim's site:

Zim is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control.

Zim can be used to:

• Keep an archive of notes
• Keep a daily or weekly journal
• Take notes during meetings or lectures
• Organize task lists
• Draft blog entries and emails
• Do brainstorming