An Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) is a software tool, which replicates a page in a paper lab notebook. You can write your observations, notes, protocols and more using your computer. An ELN has several advantages: Your notes are conserved and your colleagues or followers can repeat the same experiments, data can easily be linked with the experiment, are more traceable, more secure as well as reusable. Hence, good data management and implementation of the FAIR principles is facilitated. Some ELNs can also benefit your teamwork, for example, handle equipment use and booking, or manage inventories of supplies, chemicals or samples. There are different ELNs, with advantages and disadvantages. Some are generic, some are specialised for certain disciplines or provide specific functions e.g. drawing of chemical structures [1]. However, there is no ELN specifically for biodiversity and environmental data. The establishment of an ELN depends to a large extent on the individual possibilities in the working group/institution and, above all, on its own data types. The ELN Finder can help you decide which ELN fits your requirements [2]. A free and very flexible solution that has proven itself in the natural sciences is the cloud-based ELN eLabFTW.

This video (published by NCSU BIT, 2017) shows you how to use electronic lab notebooks.

eLabFTW is a free, secure and open source ELN for research teams. You can document your experiments and manage your lab. There is a big github community, where you can find a lot of information.

This video (published by The NOMAD Laboratory, 2022) shows you how to set up eLabFTW.