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Specimen Barcode and Labeling Guide: Difference between revisions
Specimen Barcode and Labeling Guide (view source)
Revision as of 14:25, 28 January 2015
, 28 January 2015→Why some institutions have chosen not to use barcodes
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*Currently at SBMNH invertebrate zoology we do not use barcodes on specimen labels. We see loan processing as the primary use of barcodes. While we do have dozens of loans per year, the added effort to integrate a barcode system into our cataloguing scheme is not worth the time/cost to implement at this time.” | *Currently at SBMNH invertebrate zoology we do not use barcodes on specimen labels. We see loan processing as the primary use of barcodes. While we do have dozens of loans per year, the added effort to integrate a barcode system into our cataloguing scheme is not worth the time/cost to implement at this time.” | ||
* KU Ichthyology has chosen not to use barcodes due to the cost per unit effort being too high. "Due to the fact that we only use barcodes for processing loans and inventories and process relatively small loans of material, the cost of adding barcodes to every jar (43,000 of them) far outweighs the gain achieved." from Andy Bentley (abentley@ku.edu) | * KU Ichthyology has chosen not to use barcodes due to the cost per unit effort being too high. "Due to the fact that we only use barcodes for processing loans and inventories and process relatively small loans of material, the cost of adding barcodes to every jar (43,000 of them) far outweighs the gain achieved." from Andy Bentley (abentley@ku.edu) | ||
==Barcodes and GUIDs== | |||
The content of a barcode and the content of a GUID are distinctly different, and how they are used is also different. That said, there are possible contradictions. In general, | |||
*a GUID is part the digital record and does not have to appear on the specimen. | |||
*a GUID could be the same value as the barcode, but they are usually created from different domains, for example a URI or UUID for the GUID which is a single, contiguous string, and an identifier with possible satellites for the barcode, for example 'Florida Museum of Natural History x1224355y' -and is not a contiguous string of text. | |||
*a barcode is expected to be attached in some way to the specimen, and be encoded in a way that can be rapidly read by a special reader. | |||
*a GUID, while it is also targeted at machine processing, it is possible for a human to read it. | |||
==Labels and Labeling== | ==Labels and Labeling== | ||