Notebook

“ The facts are written in their proper spaces when first ascertained, and when the work of research is finished it will be found that the work of compilation has taken care of itself! In fact, the notebook is self-compiling. The blank spaces are arranged in the order of the statements as they are to appear on the printed page, the connecting words and proper punctuation being printed in the notebook. Having filled in all the spaces which our data requires, we simply draw a pen through the rest, and our book is practically compiled, for its own leaves may be sent to the printer as manuscript! ”

“ It would save much valuable time, at present frequently wasted in writing useless notes, if the teacher constantly squared his notebook requirements with questions such as these:—
Is the notebook work as I am conducting it calculated to develop the habit of critical reading? Does the time spent in writing up notes justify itself by fixing in the child's mind new and really relevant information not given in the text? Is it teaching students to combine facts, opinions, and statistics, to form conclusions really their own? ”

“ Make the Habit of Keeping the Lab Notebook in Your Desk You need to keep your lab notebook at hand, and write things down while you are working. If you rely on your recollection to remember a good idea, a suggestion during a meeting, or an important step in your data analysis or model simulation, you can find yourself in a situation where you no longer remember that critical thought. ”

“ The only true way is to have the notes made directly in the permanently bound notebook at the time when the experiment is actually in progress. The student ought not to take the laboratory notebook home at all without the instructor's knowledge and permission. Each experiment should be entered in the notebook in a brief, businesslike manner. Long-winded, superfluous discussions should be avoided. ”

“ If you find it too complicated to keep all of your projects in a single lab notebook, you can maintain a lab notebook for each project. Alternatively, you can use a ring binder, in which each project is maintained behind a separate tab divider inside the binder. You also have the option of using an electronic lab notebook. The advantage of electronic notes is that they can be searched easily [ [3] ] , and computer-generated figures can be quickly copied to the notebook. If you do not identify the right technology, it can be very time-consuming to make a polished electronic notebook. ”

“ Project Notebook Every scientist worth his salt keeps detailed notes on each project on which he works. You should do likewise. This notebook, which could as well be a set of file cards, contains a running, day-by-day account of everything that concerns the project—observations, speculations, experiments, materials, expenses, procedures, data and observations, hypotheses, checks for validity, conclusions, and conjectures. ”

“ There seems to be a misconception in the computational biology community that a lab notebook is only useful for recording experimental protocols and their results. A lab notebook is much more than that. It is an organizational tool and memory aid, which serves as the primary record of scientific research and activity for all scientists. It also serves as a legal record of ownership of the ideas and results obtained by a scientist. ”

“ Scientists should record every experiment, every result, every research meeting, notes from seminars, research conference calls, thoughts related to their research problem—all of these items go into their lab notebooks. In a very real way, the lab notebook is a chronological log of everything scholarly a scientist does. Each lab notebook entry should be written immediately after the activity or work was performed. ”

“ On the question of notebook work, there will always be a considerable difference of opinion. It is much easier to state what notebook work should not be than to outline precisely how it should be conducted. Certainly it should not be overdone. It should not be an exercise usurping time disproportionate to its value. ”

“ Your lab notebook is part of the scientific legacy of your laboratory. Therefore, you need to protect your lab notebook. Paper lab notebooks should not be taken home. When you leave the laboratory each day, you should leave your lab notebook in a location where your research supervisor can find it. Ideally, you should lock it in the same place every day. If your research institution or lab supervisor allows, you will be able to make copies of your lab notebook, but the original belongs to the institution that paid your salary and handled your research funds. ”

“ It is only by the constant use of a pair of scales and an accurate knowledge of materials with the ability to combine them in the most efficient manner that the weight and strength may be kept in harmony. Such knowledge and experience come only with practice. They may, however, be acquired by any one. In this regard, a notebook forms an almost indispensable aid to the experimenter. ”

“ With the fresh sheet always comes an inspiration, no matter what failures have gone before. Poor pages can be done over when necessary, but do not haunt the workers with their discouraging suggestions, as in the use of a notebook. The leaves may be gathered together into a binding of some sort. Even covers of plain brown wrapping paper can be made artistic with a simple border line well placed or a design cut from a paper of a different tone. ”

“ Time can be saved by having all the necessary materials close at hand and conveniently arranged. The coins should be kept in a separate purse, and the pictures, colors, stamps, and designs for drawing should be mounted on stiff cardboard which may be punched and kept in a notebook cover. The series of sentences, digits, comprehension questions, fables, etc., should either be mounted in similar fashion, or else printed in full on the record sheets used in the tests. ”

“ Published in booklet form, four to eight pages in length, 8 by 10 1/2 inches in size, they are designed for easy inclusion in the standard size three- ring notebook. Illustrations and technical diagrams are line drawings, black on white, and may conveniently be reproduced when quick multiple copies are required. ”

“ Somewhat absentmindedly O’Brien felt two of his pockets and then produced a small leather-covered notebook and a gold ink-pencil. ”

“ If you use paper pads or other assorted pieces of paper to write down your ideas or take notes during meetings and seminars, you may lose important items or waste too much time looking for ideas later. ”

“ Directly below me was the library table and upon its top a blue desk blotter; a silver filagreed inkstand stood open; penholders, pencils, paper knife were on a tray beside it, one pen lying separate from the others with a ruler, upon the blotting pad; books and a magazine neatly in a pile. The walls, as I circled them with my eyes, were book-lined everywhere except for the grate and the two doors.
Then I inspected the skylight, frame and glass, feeling it over with my hands. There was no entrance here. ”

“ As regards ordinary Stationery it is hardly necessary to say much. Note-paper is usually stamped with the library arms, and envelopes with the name on the flap. Pens, ink, pencils, rulers, date-cases, paper-knives, &c., are all so familiar that it would be waste of time to consider them separately. Any intelligent librarian will find endless suggestion and profit from a visit to a large stationer’s warehouse, and may even pick up wrinkles of some value by keeping his eyes open to the adaptability of many articles of manufactured stationery. ”

“ There have been wonderful improvements in the processes of making and setting type, and printing-presses (Fig. 11) have become marvels of mechanical skill, but the book of to-day is essentially like the book of four hundred years ago. The tablet of the memory, the knotted cord and notched stick, the uncanny picture-writing, the clumsy picture-sign, the alphabet, the manuscript volume, the printed block-book and the volume before you bring to an end the story of the book. ”

“ When all original composition was done, and it was necessary to make ready a copy for the printer, even at this time I was confronted with a foolish hindrance. One library in Lambeth, which at one time had a table with pens, ink and blotting pads for the convenience of visitors, had had these things removed; but seeing no sign to the contrary, I still thought I would be allowed to take possession of a corner of this table and write, providing I supplied my own material. So, this library was chosen for my week's writing, but I was warned off at the commencement. ”

“ The moral to be pointed out is that the catalog must be good as a first requisite to a library. In the words of the old comparison, the catalog is the key to the otherwise hidden material buried in books. In a library of any size, the best desk attendant in the world is almost helpless, or at best constantly handicapped, without a convenient and rational classification of the volumes of the collection and the bibliographical aid of a catalogue. The born bibliographer is as rare as the born teacher or poet. ”

“ Adjoining the writing-table is a smaller one, on which stands a typewriter. All about the room, on tables and systematically arranged, and suggestive of the strict order imposed by a meticulous mind. There is one door to right, another to left, the latter leading to an inner chamber. On the writing-table lie papers and a portable speaking-tube. A telephone, a waste-paper basket, and a revolving book-stand are within easy reach of the Professor’s chair, while behind it is a screen partly covering the door leading to the inner chamber. ”

“ If you write a large hand, take foolscap; if a small hand, use letter-paper size. But note-paper is too small, when you are writing for the press.
Before you commence your manuscript, take a quire, and prepare each sheet by splitting it all down the folded side, with a sharp paper-cutter, thus dividing it into half-sheets. You can do this better on a flat table than on the slope of a desk. Keep your left hand pressing down hard on the quire, while you are cutting it with your right.
The best paper-cutters are those of real ivory. A handle is of no advantage to them, but rather the contrary. ”

“ Later if some are still unable to succeed, a paper spectrum may be shown to them, or what is better, six bits of paper like their own, pasted on a card, with an interval as wide as two papers between each two. When every child can readily select the six standard colors from the eighteen then all of them may with advantage be told to lay the six in a row on the gray cardboard or desk, in their proper order, and sufficiently separated to allow room for two other papers between each two. ”

“ The paper-pad will be found most useful to travelling writers who use ink, and those authors whom gout, or some other respectable ailment, compels to work recumbently in bed or on sofa. The writer in bed, with ink handy, has only to take up his pad in one hand and his pen in the other, and as sheet after sheet is covered—sheets of paper bien entendu—he tears it off, and dries it at once on the blotter, which forms a portion of the pad. ”

“ The desks had every convenience that could facilitate study; but what most caught my eye was a little key-board at each, connected by a wire with the librarian's desk. The reader had only to find the mark of his book in the catalog, touch a few lettered or numbered keys, and on the instant a runner at the central desk started for the volume, and, appearing after an astonishingly short interval at the door nearest his desk, brought him his book and took his acknowledgment without disturbing any of the neighboring readers. ”

“ The arrangement of a table on the page and all typographical details — such as the shape of the figures, their spacing, the thickness and placing of the rules, the colour and quality of the paper, &c. — are of the highest importance, as the computer has to spend hours with his eyes fixed upon the book; and the efforts of eye and brain required in finding the right numbers amidst a mass of figures on a page and in taking them out accurately, when the computer is tired as well as when he is fresh, are far more trying than the mechanical action of simple reading. ”

“ If a dictionary catalog is made it will prove to be most helpful to the serious students. For the average reader, the person who wishes to get a recent book, the latest novel, etc., prepare lists of additions from month to month, post them up in some convenient place in the library, and put them in a binder to be left on desk or table in the delivery room. ”

“ Upon this table is the inkstand, and below it apparently the inkbottle; and the table has in itself receptacles for books and paper or parchment. In the wall of the room are cupboards, also for the reception of books, as we see by one lying loose in them. The man is here seated on a stool; but in our cut No. 228, taken from a manuscript in the National Library in Paris (No. 6985) , he is seated in a chair, with a writing-desk attached to it. The scribe holds in his hand a pen, with which he is writing, and a knife to scratch the parchment where anything may need erasion. ”

“ At last, however, the copy goes to press, the proof is promptly returned and corrected (we are content with a single revise) , and the three or four bulky volumes of manuscript are condensed into a single handy and portable volume of type, printed in double columns and on ordinary paper for subscribers, but for reading-room use in single column on a strong vellum paper, adapted to bear rough handling, the opposite column being left blank for insertions, and the book supplied with guards to allow of interleaving. ”