LOCal: A Flexible Web-Based Microscope Reservation System

Many microscopes, especially confocal and electron microscopes, are costly to purchase and maintain and are often only available in centralized facilities. The Internet has provided the potential for real-time accessibility to these microscopy resources with HTML pages describing the facility and the equipment available and, in some cases, the remote use of the microscope itself. Web-based booking systems have become another powerful way to improve accessibility to a microscope. A public-domain, calendar-based booking system for the online scheduling and user management of microscopes in laboratories and multi-user microscopy facilities is described. One extremely powerful application of Internet technology has been for individual research laboratories to create an online presence through the Web. Establishing such a Web presence has been facilitated by the advent of “what you see is what you get” HTML editors and easy-to-use Web server applications. The vast majority of laboratories now have Web sites that provide information about the laboratory, such as research projects, favorite protocols, and access to publications, images, and movies. Reflecting a trend seen in the general commodity Internet, these scientific sites have now become more sophisticated, often containing interactive content such as forms and Web databases. These interactive elements are created with “Internet-aware” scripting languages such as Perl, PHP, and JavaScript. The use of these scripting languages is not new. Perl, for example, has been used for Webbased input forms for years. However, as these scripting languages have become more powerful, so has their potential. About five years ago, we developed a Web calendar system for microscopes at the University of Wisconsin. Originally, we set out to provide a simple, no-frills, “paper calendar” system that would operate exactly like a paper calendar hanging on the door of a laboratory, except this would be modifiable and readable from a Web browser. As users and laboratory managers became accustomed to this simple system, we added new features such as user accounts, simple billing from the calendar, and the implementation of microscope usage rules in the calendar, such as hours of allowable use for different classes of user competencies. As the system became more complex and the underlying code more unwieldy, we decided to write a new purpose-built scheduling application for microscopy, rather than continuing to modify simple text-based or “flat file”-based systems. We have used the Web scripting language PHP and the database system MySQL to create a booking calendar system for microscopes. The speed and flexibility of these Web scripting languages has led to them being used extensively over the last 10 years for the creation of reservation calendars. Commonly used for booking lecture halls or announcing such events as