[NHCOLL-L:5250] Re: Bar-codes in Digital Images

[Sweeney, Patrick]

Hi Chris,

The scenario in the herbarium at the Yale Peabody Museum is similar to the one described by Paul.  We image specimens with 1D barcodes (Code 39 or '3 of 9') affixed to the sheet.  We then read barcodes from the resulting image files (and rename the image files with barcode as name) using a Bash shell script that uses a non-open source Java application (RBarcode Vision, http://www.java4less.com/vision/vision.php) that does the work of finding and reading the barcode and Imagemagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php), which creates a derivative of the master image that the Java application can read.

As an experiment, I just successfully scanned the barcode in an image of one of our specimens (displayed on a computer monitor and printed out by a laser printer).

It does sound like your barcode reader does not support the kind of barcode you are trying to read.

Best,
Patrick
________________________________
Patrick Sweeney, Ph.D.
Collections Manager, Division of Botany

Peabody Museum of Natural History
Yale University, P.O. Box 208118
New Haven, CT 06520-8118
http://www.peabody.yale.edu/collections/bot

SHIPPING ADDRESS:
Yale University Herbarium
Peabody Museum of Natural History
Yale University
170-210 Whitney Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511

email: patrick.sweeney at yale.edu<mailto:patrick.sweeney at yale.edu>
phone: 203.432.3537
FAX: 203.432.7907

On Feb 8, 2011, at 3:14 PM, Del Re, Christine wrote:

>From SPNHC conference papers that I have heard,  I have understood that a number of you are putting your bar-codes into your digital images when you are photographing. I thought this was being done to link the image, artifact, and bar-code together so that  - if necessary – the bar-code for the object can actually be read by scanning it in the photograph.

We have been attempting this here with an imaging project – but so far our bar-code readers (in our museum shops) are not reading the bar-codes.

Have I misunderstood this – or are some of you able to read your bar-codes that are in your images?? If so, I will work on our system until we can get it to work.  I just want to confirm that I have not misunderstood information from presentations that I have heard.

With my sincere thanks, Chris Del Re


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<mailto:gruber at mpm.edu>
www.mpm.edu<http://www.mpm.edu/>