Barcodes

Since I am new to the bulletin board, I am not sure this has been asked
yet...

Suellen Towers, Rare Books Cataloger at George Washington U., wants to
make a case for NOT placing a pre-adhesived bar code directly onto the
book plate of the rare books in her collection.

I suggested several reasons why they should not be so stuck:

        - questionable pH of adhesive
        - migration of the adhesive through the bookplate and onto the boards
        - questionable pH of materials used for the bar code

Can anyone back up these assumptions up with documentation ?  I'm sorry,
but Suellen was not able to give me the brand of bar code they are
using.

My suggestion to her for placement of the bar code was:

      If the printing on the bar code is good quality and if your
photocopier has been "tuned up" you should be able to photocopy the bar
code onto a piece of alkaline buffered bond paper and insert the paper
slip into the rare book.  A scanner should be able to read the
photocopy.

If there are any other bright ideas out there re: bar codes on rare
books, please let me know.

Charlotte B. Brown                             bitnet: c_brown@fandmlib
Archives / Franklin & Marshall College

    **** Moderator's comments:   Just a quick addition:  perhaps even
    better than photocopying the bar code would be to generate the
    bar code originally on a computer and print it, perhaps with
    accompanying information (eg human readable callnumber) with a laser
    printer.  A cooperative systems type ought to be able to knock
    something off in short-order.

                                  ***
                   Conservation DistList Instance 4:2
                  Distributed: Wednesday, May 13, 1990
                        Message Id: cdl-4-2-004
                                  ***