Herbarium Specimen Labels Needed

[Jim Beach]

Herbarium scientists:

We at KU are developing a Win95 database application ("Oz") for managing
biological collections as a successor to the MUSE software package, on US
National Science Foundation support.  Details are on the Oz project home
page: http://www.nhm.ukans.edu/~ozlab.  The first release due in Fall 1998
will be free.

MUSE was implemented for several zoological fields but not for botany.
Currently we are investigating Oz software options for herbarium specimen
label design and printing, as well as for output of other kinds of reports,
such as annotation labels, slide labels, dried fruit/wood labels, etc. We
are in need of samples of plant specimen labels of these various kinds in
order to establish the functional requirements for report design, layout
and printing.

Would you kindly consider mailing or faxing from your institution, a small
number of samples (or xeroxes) of typical plant specimen labels or labels
which might exemplify a specialized formatting or layout requirement of
some kind.  Circles and arrows or handwritten comments would be welcome to
help identify features you think are important.   Simply throwing a few
labels into an envelope or into the fax machine and sending them to us
would be very useful!

We would greatly value a 15 minute investment on your part, you would be
contributing significantly to the design of collections community software,
and we will accommodate as many printing features and functions as we can
in the Oz package.

Thanks in advance.

Mail: Todd Kofford, Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research
Center, Dyche Hall, University of Kansas, KS 66045, USA.

Fax:  Todd Kofford,  (785) 864-5010

Additional information on the Oz project can be obtained from the Project
Manager, Laura Green (redgreen at ukans.edu, (785) 864-3803).



____________________________________________________

James H. Beach, OZ Software Project
Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045. Tel: (703) 319-1173
E-mail: jbeach at nbii.gov