Reddit reviews At the Bench: A Laboratory Navigator, Updated Edition

I love this book.

I've always liked "At the Bench" by Kathy Barker.

This is highly dependent on the area of neuro you're in. It might not vary much from the typical cell/molec biology lab, might involve skills heavy in engineering, animal handling skills, programming skills, etc. Even across labs within an area there will variation in the "set" of core techniques (and thus skills) required.

For a general introduction to working in a lab, you should check out "at the bench". This will skew towards general biology lab skills, but is a great start. It also gives very important tips on peacefully co-existing with your lab mates: https://www.amazon.com/At-Bench-Laboratory-Navigator-Updated/dp/0879697083

I highly recommend you these books: labmaths and at the bench

https://www.amazon.com/At-Bench-Laboratory-Navigator-Updated/dp/0879697083
Is a really good start - it also covers more "big picture" items about working in a lab, like etiquette and safety.

Very highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/At-Bench-Laboratory-Navigator-Updated/dp/0879697083. In grad school, we kept a copy in the lab and gave specific readings to new lab members. It's a super-friendly and pragmatic book, targeted to readers in exactly your situation.

But no book will resolve all the contradictory lab folklore, the field has lots of history and habitual behavior. Many researchers believe that if a particular protocol consistently works, then it's good because it eliminates a source of uncertainty. That doesn't make it the optimal protocol, but because so much of experimental science is eliminating sources of uncertainty, it's a perfectly reasonable opinion.

I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but At The Bench - A Laboratory Navigator has a 10-page chapter about keeping a lab notebook.

Here's a brief Google Books preview; unfortunately it does not cover the relevant chapter.

This presentation(PDF link) cites a book called Writing the Laboratory Notebook by Howard Kanare, which (based on the Amazon reviews) might be more geared towards industry labs but could still be pretty useful in a general sense. You can find out for yourself, since I managed to find a full text copy online(PDF link). I don't think I'm accessing this through any proxies, so it does seem like it's freely available.

For a more thorough investigation of what's out there, you should consult your institution's library; I'm sure someone will be happy to help track down the exact book you are thinking of, or something functionally equivalent.

edit - here's a PDF link to another presentation, just for fun

You might check these out (my university library had them):

http://www.amazon.com/Lab-Ref-Volume-Reference-Handbooks/dp/0879696303/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Lab-Ref-Volume-Handbook-Reference/dp/0879698152/ref=pd_cp_b_2

http://www.amazon.com/At-Bench-Laboratory-Navigator-Updated/dp/0879697083/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Bench-Step-Step-Biologists/dp/0879698578/ref=pd_sim_b_3

At the Bench: A Laboratory Navigator by Kathy Barker is really helpful. I bought this book and read it when I started working in the lab. It is very basic!