[NHCOLL-L:4375] Re: Barcodes vs. RFID's

[Gordon Jarrell]

On the other hand, barcodes have been around for about half a century and,
for some purposes, you can print them with an off-the-shelf laser printer
and read them with an iphone.  When I looked at RFID stuff about ten years
ago, getting unique-value tags (as opposed to something like Universal
Product Codes) was expensive, and they were essentially useless at
ultra-cold storage temperatures.  If anything, barcodes (especially
2-dimensional symbologies such as DataMatrix) are increasingly used for
robotic assemblies, and most readers autodetect and translate all of the old
symbologies.
Gordon

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:34 PM, John E Simmons <simmons.johne at gmail.com>wrote:

> Regardless of whether people prefer barcodes or RFIDs for use in their
> collections, before you invest in either, the more important question to ask
> is, "which technology will be supported by industry in the short-term and
> long-term?"
>
> Museums are at the mercy of industry for many (perhaps most) of the
> products we use (e.g., many of our favorite sizes of glass jars are out of
> production because the industry has replaced them with PET containers;
> permanent inks and technical pens are disappearing in a wave of less
> permanent ink in disposable pens, and so forth).   Considering how much more
> efficient RFIDs are for inventory, as their unit price comes down, barcodes
> are doomed to disappear.  I have seen some industry forecasts that give
> barcodes less than a decade before they are extinct (meaning no one will be
> making or supporting barcode readers or software).
>
> --John
>
> John E. Simmons
> Museologica
> 128 E. Burnside Street
> Bellefonte, Pennsylvania 16823-2010
> simmons.johne at gmail.com
> 303-681-5708
> www.museologica.com
> and
> Adjunct Curator of Collections
> Earth and Mineral Science Museum & Art Gallery
> Penn State University
> 19 Deike Building
> University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-2709
> jes67 at psu.edu
>
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:54 PM, Del Re, Christine <delre at mpm.edu> wrote:
>
>>  We at MPM would like to know which other museums are now using barcodes,
>> or RFID’s on/in individual collection items?  Does anyone favor one system
>> over the other?  Also, for those using barcodes, is the preference to link a
>> generic barcode number to an artifact via a data base, or to make the
>> barcode the actual artifact number?
>>
>>
>>
>> Any thoughts or references would be appreciated
>>
>>
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>>
>> *Christine** **del  Re **|* *Senior Conservator &  Conservation Section
>> Head *
>> *Milwaukee Public Museum*
>> *800 W Wells Street*
>> *Milwaukee, WI 53233*
>> *(414) 278-2780*
>> *delre at mpm.edu <gruber at mpm.edu>*
>> *www.mpm.edu*
>>
>>
>> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
>>
>>
>


-- 
Gordon Jarrell, Ph.D
Research Associate
University of Alaska Museum
and
Museum of Southwestern Biology

mail to:
Museum of Southwestern Biology
c/o Mammal Division
1 University of New Mexico
MSC03 2020
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