Data entry and data logging are an integral part of science, and with that need came some experience using some of the databasing software out there. Excel is great for small personal projects, or simple recording of only a few categories, but sometimes you need more. For the waterfowl survey project I did with the USFWS, we used Microsoft Access to create forms that looked similar to our recording sheets to enter data into a table. Because the forms look identical, or nearly identical, to the forms we filled out in the field, it would be hard for someone to muck up the data entry by putting in the wrong column, which is a possibility within Excel. Having neatly organized data allowed us to run statistics to see if we can notice any trends going on.

Using access isn’t terribly hard if you have some experience using Excel. The form creation tool allowed me to easily create new forms for entering further information.  Here is a video that shows you some very basic Access features.

Sharepoint also uses Access databases and is very powerful because it can easily be integrated at an organization that requires multiple people using the database concurrently. It plays very nicely with microsoft windows, but not sure about other devices. While I worked with Caris Lifesciences, we utilized the sharepoint service for almost everything we did outside of the Laboratory Information System (LIS). It was quite easy to create new forms and new logs to help us record anything from maintenance to reagent dilutions. If we ran into problems, or weren’t recording enough data, it was quite easy to add more fields to the forms without having to go back an amend all the previously collected information.