Facilitating structure determination: workshop on robotics andautomation in macromolecular crystallography

As part of the annual Advanced Light Source (ALS) andStanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) Users' Meeting inOctober of this year, the macromolecular crystallography staff at bothsynchrotrons held a joint hands-on workshop to address automation issuesin crystal mounting and data collection at the beamline. This paperdescribes the ALS portion of the workshop, while the accompanying paperreviews the SSRL workshop.