in-house barcode printing

[Gail E. Kampmeier]

Mark H. Mayfield wrote:
>Why is the barcode label placed upside down on an insect pin?  I'm sure
>I've seen them facing up.

They can be blocked otherwise by other labels (insects can have quite a bit
of 'confetti' associated with a specimen, sometimes with little room
between labels). My understanding is that putting them upside down as the
bottom label on an insect pin assures the clearest access by a barcode
reader.

I think Dan Janzen's point well taken in having a "human readable code" in
addition to any type of machine readable version.

"Stinger" wrote:
>We use preprinted labels because they are
>cheaper than what we could produce ourselves.  I pay $4/1000.  In fact I think
>that we are actually getting them donated now and I don't have to deal with
>cutting or anything.

Right now, we get over 400 4-line labels per page, so 1000 labels would be
2.5 pages that we print on a laser printer.  They're set up in Excel and
printing more pages is done as needed.  Labor for cutting will run the
price up a bit, but I would still bet it's under the $4.

If you're paying $4/1000 barcodes, you may be getting an excellent deal
considering the software cost mentioned by Doug Yanega.  I'm just not
convinced that barcodes will save us time in the type of work we're doing
(systematics of a family vs. broadbased museum work).  I can see where this
might be a boon to museums sending out and receiving loans of their own
material--like the checkout at the grocery store, logging in and out
specimens by running them over the scanner would be much quicker than
typing numbers into a database. But I'm under the impression that there is
no uniformity of barcodes for insects at least and certainly the databases
that would tie them together aren't there yet...

Cheers!
Gail
=======
Gail E. Kampmeier, Research Entomologist, Illinois Natural History Survey,
Box 5 NSRL-EASB, MC-637, 1101 W. Peabody, Urbana, IL 61801 USA
ph. 217-333-2824; fax 217-333-6784; email: gkamp at uiuc.edu
=======