Barcoding

    Date: Thursday, 4 March 1993 10:03am CT
    To: SShelton
    From: deanhend
    Subject: bar codes

    Here's one for you to consider while debating about labels. In the
    proposal I'm now writing I indicated that bar codes would be put on
    all labels to allow future development of automated processing based
    on these. I became firmly convinced of the value of bar codes when I
    used them in a large field project where we were previously having
    problems with the many members of the field cre// w consistently
    adding new permutations to the sampling site descriptions which we
    had to have absolutely standardized in the data base. Bar codes
    worked great and reduced errors in this field to zip. They are
    easily produced and printed so they work fine ON A LASER printer.
    Can dot matrix printers produce usable bar codes? If not, I consider
    this a fairly important argument against their use. Despite the fact
    I don't foresee implementing a bar code-based system for some  time,
    I think putting them on labels in the first place, given the effort
    that re-labeling requires, is worth doing to leave the door open to
    possible applications later. Bar codes would not be worth using if
    one was going to have to relabel the whole collection for that
    reason only.

    Dean Hendrickson
    Curator of Ichthyology
    Texas Memorial Museum,
    deanhend [at] utxvm__cc__utexas__edu

Sally Shelton

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 6:48
                   Distributed: Friday, March 5, 1993
                        Message Id: cdl-6-48-008
                                  ***