Labels in alcohol

[P.Petry-J.D.Wightman]

On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Doug Yanega wrote:

> And yet, sometimes one can find a rough-surfaced acid-free paper to which
> the letters adhere remarkably well. I've got labels in alcohol with insect
> and plant specimens over 10 years old, and they are all quite legible, even
> though it's 4-point lettering. You need to use a microscope to detect any
> deterioration in the lettering. The worst horror stories seem to be with
> folks working with vertebrate material, so maybe dissolved fats are a
> specific and serious problem for such material. Certainly, as a general
> rule, you are VERY unlikely to have the success I did (when we got a new
> paper supplier, our labels all fell apart when they *touched* the alcohol),
> and I'm not recommending it over other techniques like impact printing, but
> to claim that ALL laser labels will fall apart quickly is simply not true.
>

Doug,
        You are correct, the labels will not fall apart quickly, I did not
say they would. However, over time they are vulnerable. If you keep them
in relatively clean alcohol and do not manipulate them, they will stay in
an almost intact condition, but as soon as you rub them against any
surface the ink will come partially or completely depends on the abrasion.
I don't know how often you manipulate your labels, but that has to be a
consideration for large permanent collections that don't have the
resources to keep checking the lables over and over.
The concern for most collection curators and managers is to have reliable
labels over a long period of time, which the laser printed ones have not
proven to be so far. I wish they would, it would make our work much
easier.

I think that the merit of the discussion is to let people know what the
empirical experiences have been so far, and that everyone has to consider
the risks of losing specimen lots because of desintegration of the labels.
With impact printers even if the ink dissolves, you still can read what
had been printed, because the characters marks are left on the paper. That
does not happen with the laser printers.

One common practice is to include in the vials/jars, etc ... a hand writen
small label that carries the lot/specimen catalogue number. This way you
will always be able to go back to the original records and produce a new
main label if an accident happens.

Have all o good weekend.

Figure 1- Tambaqui feeding on fruits from the flooded forest
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