Your Lab Data is a free web-based LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System), aimed at a typical small molecular biology laboratory. It allows users to manage their chemicals, fridges, freezers, boxes, strains, plasmids or glycerol’s, oligos / primers and much more. I started this website because of an overwhelming need to have a way to track and maintain our lab primers and glycerol stocks and thought that others may like to use this website as well. To get started you first need to sign up for an account and then select or start a lab group of your own. Once you do this you will be able to start adding chemicals and oligos of your own. The website is designed in such a way that only owners of items can modify them providing that little bit of extra security. However, I am not responsible for any loss of data or records if you choose to use this site and don’t maintain independent record. The website will be backed up regularly but I can not guarantee the safety of YOUR data. I hope people find the website helpful and user friendly and I am eager to hear comments about its functionality.

We have developed ArrayPipeline, a Perl toolkit providing object oriented methods that facilitate the rapid development of bespoke LIMS applications. The toolkit includes Perl objects that encapsulate key components of a LIMS, providing methods for creating interactive web pages, interacting with databases, error tracking and reporting, and user and session management. The MT_Plate object provides methods for manipulation and management of microtitre plates, while a given LIMS can be encapsulated by extension of the core modules, providing system specific methods for database interaction and web page management.

A common challenge for bioinformaticians, in either academic or industry laboratory environments, is providing informatic solutions via the Internet or through a web browser. Recently, the open source community began developing tools for building and maintaining web applications for many disciplines. These content management systems (CMS) provide many of the basic needs of an informatics group, whether in a small company, a group within a larger organisation or an academic laboratory. These tools aid in managing software development, website development, document development, course development, datasets, collaborations and customers. Since many of these tools are extensible, they can be developed to support other research-specific activities, such as handling large biomedical datasets or deploying bioanalytic tools. In this review of open source website management tools, the basic features of content management systems are discussed along with commonly used open source software. Additionally, some examples of their use in biomedical research are given.