Hi all,
This is the third email following up on our meeting at ENC 2008 in
Asilomar. We covered five topics, each of which will be the subject
in a separate email. Here is the summary of Monika Ivancic's working
group on manuals and user guides.
Monika scanned her transparencies, and they should be posted as pdfs
on the AMMRL website shortly.
Below is her summary of the working group's findings.
- Josh
***
There was a lot of interest in the topic "Writing User Guides and
Tutorials", since there were more than about 20 people there.
We mostly focused on being able to 'collaborate' in writing user
guides and initially people were very positive about this and wanting
to do this! But as we got to discussing things, we realized that A.
we all have different instruments running different software; B. many
of us had 'our own' way of doing things, or issues that were specific
to a facility; C. that this also depends on our users (chem vs. bio
student, beginning student vs. post doc w/previous experience).
So, we came to the conclusion that it would be pretty much IMPOSSIBLE
to have one guide from which we could ALL grab stuff, even just a
'basic procedures' one. SO we decided that it would be a good idea
to have a web page (perhaps hosted on the AMMRL web site) that would
have links to different 'user guides' in facilities with different
systems and software.
This web page would focus on Data Acquisition and not so much data
processing, since we're concerned about OUR instruments and how our
users use them (and not abuse them, hopefully).
There was some discussion on whether this should be done with a Wiki
page, but folks seemed to prefer the web page idea (hosted on
AMMRL). Some concerns raised here were on 'quality control', so who
is posting the instructions, and it was also re-iterated that this
web page would be for US, facility managers and not for the students.
We also need a standard or rules as to what's appropriate to post and
what procedures should be more difficult for students to get to (ex.
tuning of X-nuclei that require a rod, different filter, etc.)
***
In the general discussion, we also considered the notion of having a
standard "check-box" sheet that would readily identify the system
appropriate for the user guide is appropriate. We talked about
creating such a form and posting it on either AMMRl or NMRWiki to
authors of user guides could include it in their guides when posting
them for public/common download.
Josh Kurutz, Ph.D.
Technical Director, Biomolecular NMR Facility
University of Chicago
Gordon Center for Integrative Science, room W123C
929 E. 57th St.
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: (773) 834-9805
Spectrometer Room: (773) 702-4052
Cell: (773) 315-5732
Fax: (208) 978-2599
nmr.bsd.uchicago.edu
homepage.mac.com/jkurutz
Received on Mon Apr 28 2008 - 19:29:37 MST