Website update

I uploaded a bunch of new documents to the website this morning. I wanted to make note of a few of these.

#1) Sarah and I will begin implementing a new training protocol in the fall. See the training page for details. New users will have to study the document "Things to know before operating an NMR spectrometer" and pass a test before training. Then Sarah will walk through how to record a 1D 1H spectrum. She'll create their account but not activate it. Then, when they have a sample, they'll do a follow up training with me.

I'm trying to combine the best aspects of user training that I've observed by looking at NMR facility sites at different universities. Most of our user training procedure comes from Dave Vander Velde - formerly at KU, now at CalTech. I got the "Thing to know ..." idea from Jeff Simpson at MIT. I got the follow-up training idea from Rich Shoemaker - one of my mentors - at CU-Boulder. I got other good ideas many, many other facilities (too many to list).

#2) We're going to add checklists for every open-access instrument. I got this idea from Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Harvard Medical School. I'll add an essay I wrote about the philosophy of checklists tonight or tomorrow. Check our documents page for the checklists and keeps your eyes open for these on the instruments. Hopefully these help us with "avoidable failure".

J