Every time I have to write a report, prepare a presentation or meet with my boss, I curse the fact that I can’t just “+F” through my lab book and find those conditions/results/images that I’m looking for.

Of course, with an electronic lab (note)book (ELN), that would be perfectly possible. I see that there are plenty of options; purpose-built or general, local or web/cloud, free or commercial.

At the moment, I’m contemplating a locally hosted WordPress blog, because it is what I know already and it’s easy to set up, but I’m totally open to other solutions. All I know is that I’d like it to be both local and free.

Does anyone have any experience with using Electronic Lab Notebooks and have any advice or preference? I’m all ears.

Also, how about image tagging, like iPhoto or Lightroom but for micrographs? I can’t count how many times I’ve looked for “the kinda round one” or “the one with the weird speckles”…