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I have seen a similar level of buildup in the number of "personal" imaging
systems on our campus.  What I have also seen is that the quality of the
images has consistently been substandard.  Grad students who are in a rush
and have little training seem to think that because of the point-and-click
nature of the systems that they have become imaging experts.  I especially
love how brightness and contrast seem to be the most sophisticated level of
image enhancement people can come up with.

My strategy has been to offer the best support I can with every effort made
to ensure the students go home with good images.  We too have a Leica TCS
SP2 which is so easy to use that basic training is less than ten
minutes!  I find I have to play a balancing act because, once trained, the
users consistently want to be left alone to do their imaging (again, they
are point-and-click experts, given the simplicity of the instrument).

The trick seems to be to offer a certain level of independence to the
operators while monitoring their output so as to ensure quality imaging.  I
have also adopted an extremely flexible schedule to facilitate all types of
users.  On a more shrewd level I have not gone out of my way to offer
imaging expertise outside of the facility (We have a competing
deconvolution system elsewhere on campus that is suffering badly and had
initially taken a lot of our revenues away).  We have also lowered our
rates ($25/hr CDN) to promote the total number of operating hours while
subsidizing the facility more heavily from grants.  Ultimately the number
of hours the machine is in operation the better our chances for operating
grant renewal.  This may all seem counter productive to the greater good of
our research community but we have to be mindful of our reliance on grants
and as such must keep the interests of the facility foremost.

This strategy has helped somewhat although I would love to see the
equipment used even more.

At 10:02 AM 1/22/02 -0600, you wrote:
>Search the CONFOCAL archive at
>http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
>As a Core Laboratory, we have to be able to demonstrate instrument usage.
>
>When we purchased our TCS SP2 about two years ago, there were only a few
>fluorescence microscopy systems among the college of medicine faculty here
>at South Alabama; now they seem to be popping up everywhere.  They aren't
>laser-based, and don't have the SP feature of our system, but they have many
>bells and whistles that place them in competition with our lab, e.g.,
>software that enables them to do deconvolution and Z-stepping.
>
>And they have one advantage over our system.  We couldn't afford UV
>capabilities on our TCS SP, but the lower-priced, mercury burner systems
>can, of course, offer DAPI fluorescence (which many investigators seem to
>prefer to PI for nuclear staining).
>
>Not everyone can afford the $100,000 or so that it takes to purchase a
>non-confocal fluorescence microscope, high-end cooled CCD camera, and
>software such as MetaMorph, but there are many who apparently can.
>
>Do any of you run core labs and does the above describe your situation?  If
>so, how are you dealing with it?
>
>Any thoughts/ideas/insights would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Ray Hester
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Derek Schulze
Flow Cytometry and Confocal Microscopy Facility Manager
Cancer Research Labs
Queen's University
Kingston, ON
Canada
http://meds.queensu.ca/medicine/crl/flow/