<div dir="ltr">Dear Doug,<div><br></div><div>I do not think the situation is as pessimistic as you described it. I agree that printing barcodes for insect specimens that already have GUIDs is in many cases a waste of time. Unless you have a portable software/hardware system that allows you to produce individual required barcode labels instantaneously, of good quality and cheaply, barcoding of such material is not feasible.</div>
<div><br></div><div>However, your circumstances are quite unusual for larger insect collections. Vast majority of specimens in the largest collections never had UIDs. Just a year ago only about 300,000 out of some 30,000,000 insects in BMNH collection had specimen numbers, absolutely insignificant number. If you digitise such collection, there is no problem of looking up old GUID, finding the specimen and printing corresponding label. In mass digitisation projects, such as BMHN's iCollections, assigning GUID, printing barcodes and associating it with the specimen adds unnoticeable amount to total time, just as long as it takes to pin one more label under the specimen.</div>
<div><br></div><div>A few of more points:</div><div>><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><i>when used for legacy material, they take up 150% of the space of a normal insect label if they are positioned so as to make the 2D barcode scannable from above - that means the same number of specimens takes up 150% more unit trays, drawers, and cabinets, so the entire cost of physical storage is multiplied by 150%</i></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif">Why don't you pin a barcode label last, facing down? Yes, it will not be seen from above, but regular UID label is also obscured in most cases, you have to handle the specimen to see what number it is. This way the barcoded collection will take exactly the same amount of space. We pin barcode labels facing up only with larger specimens, such as butterflies, larger beetles and such, there barcode can be seen between parts of the insect.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif">></font><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">T<i>he bottom line for me is this: for our purposes, the contrast between barcodes versus human-readable labels generally favors the </i></span><b style="font-size:13px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><i>latter</i></b><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">"</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif">Nothing prevents you to have both human-readable number and barcode on one label, thus getting the best of both worlds.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif">></font><i><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">If a curator needs to shift unit trays (or individual specimens) among drawers or cabinets (due to expansion, consolidation, or changes in classification), then they can simply do so </span><b style="font-size:13px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">without incurring any changes in the database</b><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> (other than changes in taxon ID, when needed); collections whose database tracks the physical location of specimens incur a significant workload any time specimens are moved around this way (the more fine-scaled the location is recorded, the more work involved).</span></i></div>
<div><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Just because Museums do not use contemporary tracking systems it does not mean it is a universal problem. Any decent warehouse has solved this problem, they move thing around more often than curators do. It is costly, requires a lot of development, but can be done. However, it is impossible without machine-readable IDs, such as barcodes or RFIDs</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Cheers,</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br>
</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Vlad</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br>
</span></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><br>--<br>Dr Vladimir Blagoderov, FLS<br>Department of Life Sciences<br>The Natural History Museum<br>Cromwell Road, London<br>
SW7 5BD, UK<br>Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 6629 (office)<br>Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 6895 (SBIL)<br>Fax: +44 (0) 207 942 5229<br><br>e-mail:<br><a href="mailto:vlab@nhm.ac.uk" target="_blank">vlab@nhm.ac.uk</a><br><a href="mailto:vblago@gmail.com" target="_blank">vblago@gmail.com</a><br>
<br>Fungus Gnats Online:<br><a href="http://www.sciaroidea.info" target="_blank">www.sciaroidea.info</a></div>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 28 February 2014 18:28, Doug Yanega <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dyanega@ucr.edu" target="_blank">dyanega@ucr.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
Our entomology collection has had GUID labels for roughly 15 years
now, and we are one of a few institutions that routinely use both
barcode GUIDs (thermal transfer 2D) and non-barcode GUIDs (laserjet
paper labels). As such, I can speak with some confidence about the
following points of contrast between these two systems:<br>
<br>
(1) the thermal-transfer 2D barcode labels are <b>vastly</b> more
expensive and time-consuming to produce than paper labels with a
unique human-readable number, and with a much greater initial cost
of equipment (our Sato printer, the same model used at the AMNH,
cost over 5000 dollars, rolls of plastic cost several hundred, and
it prints seven labels a minute; the HP Laserjet cost 200 dollars,
archival paper is trivially cheap, and it can print around 8,000
labels a minute)<br>
(2) when used for legacy material, they take up 150% of the space of
a normal insect label if they are positioned so as to make the 2D
barcode scannable from above - that means the same number of
specimens takes up 150% more unit trays, drawers, and cabinets, so
the entire cost of physical storage is multiplied by 150%<br>
(3) the scanner will never make a typo unless the label itself is
glitched (there is indeed a very small but finite rate of glitches
during printing, such that occasional barcodes will not scan
properly, mostly 1 bits turning into 0s, and confounding the scan)<br>
(4) they are less prone to abrasion when dry than paper labels, but
far more troublesome when kept in ethanol, to the point where I
would simply never use them for liquid storage (except if taped on
the OUTSIDE)<br>
(5) they are very slightly more difficult to cut, and to put pins
through, or re-pin, but they are better suited for being attached to
microscope slides<br>
<br>
Certain types of routine workflow go faster with barcodes, others go
slower, and others are the same; specifically (1) inventorying an
outgoing loan is much faster whenever the specimens already have
barcodes on them (but not if barcodes are being added to the
specimens as they are being packed, which is more typical) (2)
anything that could normally be done by reading labels on specimens
in situ in the collection takes longer (because the scanning devices
aren't wireless, requiring you to bring the specimens out of the
storage area to the scanner location) (3) they are no better during
legacy label data entry, which is the most common routine activity
(if anything, it actually takes very slightly longer to stop typing,
pick up the scanner, wave it over the barcode, wait for the beep,
put the scanner down, and resume typing, as opposed to simply typing
in a 6-digit number manually)<br>
<br>
The bottom line for me is this: for our purposes, the contrast
between barcodes versus human-readable labels generally favors the <b>latter</b>,
especially regarding <b>points 1 and 2 above</b>. We operate on a
very limited budget, and within a finite storage space, so the few
circumstances where barcodes have the upper hand do not really
justify the expense. Accordingly, out of some 3 million specimens
total, we have around 425,000 specimens with paper GUID labels, and
about 100,000 with barcodes, most of the latter being specimens
loaned to us from other institutions, or on microscope slides.<br>
<br>
To me, personally, for the tasks I do as collection manager, the
human-readable labels are just fine, and I almost NEVER find myself
wishing "Boy, it's too bad this batch of specimens doesn't have
barcodes!". Until and unless one uses both systems side-by-side, the
contrast will not be obvious; it is easy to conceive how barcodes
are superior in theory, but in practice their superiority is highly
context-dependent, and comes with a significant cost. If you find
that student helpers who are typing in numbers are making more than
one error per 10,000 records, then it's easier to find better
student helpers.<br>
<br>
As an aside, I would also caution against over-reliance on GUIDs as
tracking tools, at least in collections like ours; our primary
tracking tool is taxonomy, so any specimen databased to taxon will
be easily found in the collection simply by knowing what it is. If a
curator needs to shift unit trays (or individual specimens) among
drawers or cabinets (due to expansion, consolidation, or changes in
classification), then they can simply do so <b>without incurring
any changes in the database</b> (other than changes in taxon ID,
when needed); collections whose database tracks the physical
location of specimens incur a significant workload any time
specimens are moved around this way (the more fine-scaled the
location is recorded, the more work involved). I'd be surprised if
there are many natural history collections that do NOT organize
material by taxon, so find it hard to imagine when one would ever
need a system that fine-scaled.<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<pre cols="72">--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
<a href="http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html" target="_blank">http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html</a>
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82</pre>
</font></span></div>
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