Amid the many documents analyzed, Elian’s attention was drawn to the different names given to the laboratory notebooks. There is a \u201cprotocol notebook,\u201d a \u201cclinical research notebook,\u201d a \u201csamples notebook,\u201d among others. “Their role is nearly the same. What these different names suggest is that there is no strict standard for managing the notebooks,\u201d he points out. Archivist Maria Celina Soares de Mello e Silva, from the historical archive of the Imperial Museum, in Petr\u00f3polis (Rio de Janeiro), goes further. \u201cWe need guidelines and a national policy to preserve the memory of science and technology in the country,\u201d she states. For 34 years, Silva worked at the Science History Archive of the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences (MAST), in Rio de Janeiro, which houses the personal archives of more than 50 researchers\u2014mainly from exact sciences, such as astronomy, chemistry, and mathematics. \u201cMany of the personal archives of scientists given to us contained institutional documents, which should not have been at the researcher’s home,\u201d she exemplifies. “When this happens, it is usually because the institution in which the scientist worked had no concern for the custody and preservation of such a document.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Oswaldo Cruz House Collection \/ Publicity<\/span><\/a> A laboratory notebook by Carlos Chagas on experiments involving the inoculation of Trypanosoma cruzi<\/em> in subjectsOswaldo Cruz House Collection \/ Publicity<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Based on findings such as these, Silva coordinated a study at MAST, from 2003 to 2006, on the production and preservation of science and technology records in the city of Rio. In a year and a half, she visited 102 laboratories from seven institutes linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovations, such as the Institute of Nuclear Engineering and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The investigation was documented by Silva\u2019s 2007 PhD thesis, defended at FFLCH-USP. “As there was no institutional policy to preserve laboratory documents, in the institutions we visited the scientists themselves oversaw such preservation\u2014despite having no expertise or time for it. Many documents were lost because of this,” she shares. “Regarding the laboratory notebooks, we found that some researchers had no idea whether they were personal documents, that could be taken home with them, or if they belonged in the institution.”<\/p>\n Jackson Cioni Bittencourt, from the USP Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB-USP) and president of the USP Agency for Academic Information Management, makes it very clear: “Laboratory notebooks must stay in the lab.\u201d In 2017, when he oversaw the ICB, the Office for Best Practice in Science was established, meaning there was a new standard for the laboratory notebooks produced there. The template was inspired by a notebook used by Bittencourt in his PhD research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique<\/em> (CNRS), in France.<\/p>\n Since then, the notebooks given to each researcher are numbered and catalogued and remain in the laboratory for five years before being permanently moved to the institution library. The first page contains guidelines for researchers on how to use it, detailing that any changes should be accompanied by the date and a signature, and that it must not be removed from the institution. “It is a document that belongs to USP, since the research is developed within the university,” says Bittencourt. “It reinforces the issue of intellectual property and increases the security of both the data and the scientist in case the research is questioned at any point. In addition, the notebook can be a source for similar research within the ICB.”<\/p>\n Scientists have been taking notes on their experiments for a long time. “It is difficult to determine when this first began, but both Leonardo da Vinci [1452\u20131519] and Galileo Galilei [1564\u20131642] already had notebooks,” shares historian Gildo Magalh\u00e3es do Santos Filho, director of the USP Interunits Center for Science History. “However, notebooks first became a research protocol in laboratories during the eighteenth century.” M\u00e1rcia Regina Barros da Silva, professor of science history at USP, points to the European scientific expeditions carried out in America, Africa, and Asia from the eighteenth century onward. “These exploratory trips included a natural philosopher\u2014only called a scientist in the early nineteenth century\u2014who made notes including both text and drawings,” says Silva, coordinator of the Laboratory of History, Technology, and Society at FFLCH-USP. She goes on: “It is interesting that the idea of notes has changed throughout history as science itself changes.” As an example, she cites British chemist and physicist Robert Boyle (1627\u20131691), who did not describe the sealing materials used in his vacuum machine. “He found it unnecessary to include such detail at the time, but today we must record each step taken,” she says.<\/p>\n