Herbarium label-making programs and Biota

[Peter Rauch]

Please reply to Rob, not me. Peter
---------Forwarded message---------
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 10:21:04 -0000
From: Robert K. Colwell <colwell at uconnvm.uconn.edu>

As the author/developer of Biota, I am replying to Michael Chamberland's
message (and responses to it):

>    I've also used Biota, and found the output herbarium labels to be
>generally serviceable, but not very flexible or attractive.  Perhaps Biota
>output could be fed into a mail merge template in Microsoft Word, allowing
>for better control of fonts, italics, etc.  Has anyone tried this?

Here's how to do it. Among the options that Biota's Herbarium Labels tool
offers is "Save label text to disk instead of printing." Whatever fields
and field labels you have selected to be included in the label text are
written to a disk file in plain text, with fields as rows, and records
separated by a blank row. This format is easily transposed, in Word, to a
format usable as a Word Mailmerge Data Source document (with fields as
columns, records as rows) by (1) globally replacing all double paragraph
marks (^p^p--record delimiters) with a temporary placeholder character
(e.g. ##), (2) replacing all single paragraph marks (^p--field
delimiters) with tabs (^t), then (3) replacing the placeholders (##) with
single paragraph marks (^p). (4) Save as Text. (5) Add a header row with
field names. Word Mailmerge (or Access or FileMaker) can read this
standard tab-delimited format. (Since this is a bit clunky, albeit quick,
you have inspired me to include a direct output to column format for
herbarium labels in the next update of Biota....).

The Herbarium Label text export option is included in Biota 1.3 and
later, so if you have an earlier version, you will need to update by
downloading the current version from the Biota website (address in my
signature block, below). With Version 1.3, the Herbarium Labels tool
offers nearly 50 options,in addition to standard core data.

Just be clear about this, Biota neither a dedicated herbarium label
application, nor a do-it-yourself database development application (like
Access or FileMaker) but rather a full-featured, stand-alone, specimen
database management application--now used in 24 countries, and 43 US
States.

Designing an herbarium label tool (for a general specimen database
management application) that suits everyone is truly a daunting
enterprise, as anyone who has tried will no doubt attest. Although there
is certainly a core of common data elements, virtually all herbaria, and
indeed, most botanical collectors, have different traditions for layout,
fields, field labels, fonts, and auxiliary content--such as including
meteorological data, ecological data, logos, and even maps. Entomologists
and vertebrate biologists generally eschew such freedom of expression,
and have settled on a more standard format, not because they are more
disciplined, but because there is simply not enough space to express
oneself on the tiny labels they use!

Michael Chamberland also suggests:

>(I also
>think an Angiosperm database, extracted for Kartesz for example, would be a
>wonderful add-on to Biota, so that each independent user would not have to
>tell the program that Quercus was in the Fagaceae, for example).

Since many alternative classifications exist for most higher taxa, I
chose, instead, to make it very easy to import your own data for higher
taxa in Biota. It is simple to import delimited-text tables of classified
higher higher taxa (taxonomic flatfiles),including relational links, into
a Biota data file, using Biota's Import Editor with the Merge Imported
Records option. (See Manual Supplement 1, pages S59-S60.) With this
option, you can even update existing data without bothering to delete
duplications in the source file, since duplicate taxon names (the Key
field in Biota higher taxon tables) are simply ignored and not imported.

Robert Colwell


>(I also
>think an Angiosperm database, extracted for Kartesz for example, would be a
>wonderful add-on to Biota, so that each independent user would not have to
>tell the program that Quercus was in the Fagaceae, for example).


_________
Robert K. Colwell, Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, U-43
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-3042, USA
Voice: 860-486-4395   Fax 860-486-3790
colwell at uconnvm.uconn.edu
Visit the Biota Website at http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/biota
& the EstimateS Website at http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/estimates.