, Bar Codes in tracking samples

[Julian Humphries]

Jim Blake
ENSR, 89 Water Street
Woods Hole, MA 02543

wrote:
(lots of text about barcoding books, which of course is easy to
do and which are *not* that similar to musums, omitted)

>I could envision a situation where loans
>coming to end of term could be readily identified by a tickler program
>or something that would alert the curatorial assistants to remind the
>scientist to extend or return the loan.  All these tools do is make
>life easier and allow the few individuals working in museum collections
>to be more efficient in their work.

But what does this have to do with barcodes? We already use numbers
on specimens and loan management software is already in use in lots of
museums.  Everybody assumes barcodes are something special.  I
predict with 3-4 years they will be obsolete, that scanners will read
Times Roman numbers as well as they read |||\|/!! (put your favorite
barcode here).  Such scanners already exist, but accuracy problems
are not yet solved.

>
>Obviously, there may be technical problems with putting such labels
>inside of jars with alcohol; associating them with small pinned
>insects; or dry stored molluscs in little boxes.  Given all that we
>have achieved in recent years, including the ability to send this
>e-mail message, I am sure that someone will come up with convienent
>solutions to those problems.


Feel free to do so, I've spent a lot of time trying, how about you?


Julian Humphries                          Email: jmh3 at cornell.edu
The MUSE Project, Cornell University
83 Brown Road, Building 3
Ithaca, NY  14850  USA
Voice: 607-257-8143                       Fax:   607-257-8109