Remote stations have a computer, Netscape, an Internet link and an optional local video camera. Users range from researchers and students to Web surfers. Zaluzec designed a graphical user interface for the AEM that allows users to shift and tilt samples, and focus and magnify the microscope images. The AEM has a complex mix of analog and digital equipment, which the skilled microscopist controls like a master musician at her piano. Electronic notebooks MMC research is shared in an electronic notebook available to all on the Web page.
Researchers record details of experiments in notebooks.
Oak Ridge adapted this idea for the computer, and Zaluzec modified the idea for MMC-users. Initially, the Oak Ridge notebook began as text about the experiment and data and researchers' names. As technology advanced, so did the electronic notebook. Zaluzec rewrote the software to allow real-time access to the instruments and the ability to grab and store still images and digital movies of experiments. Research at the Materials Microcharacterization Collaboratory is saved in an electronic notebook adapted from an Oak Ridge National Laboratory invention.