[Nhcoll-l] barcoding pros and cons

Sat Mar 1 18:32:00 EST 2014

Dear Doug,

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.

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.

A few of more points:
>*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%*

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.

>T*he bottom line for me is this: for our purposes, the contrast between
barcodes versus human-readable labels generally favors the **latter*"

Nothing prevents you to have both human-readable number and barcode on one
label, thus getting the best of both worlds.

>*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 without incurring any changes
in the database (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).*

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

Cheers,

Vlad

--
Dr Vladimir Blagoderov, FLS
Department of Life Sciences
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road, London
SW7 5BD, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 6629 (office)
Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 6895 (SBIL)
Fax: +44 (0) 207 942 5229

e-mail:
vlab at nhm.ac.uk
vblago at gmail.com

Fungus Gnats Online:
www.sciaroidea.info

On 28 February 2014 18:28, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:

>  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:
>
> (1) the thermal-transfer 2D barcode labels are *vastly* 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)
> (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%
> (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)
> (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)
> (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
>
> 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)
>
> The bottom line for me is this: for our purposes, the contrast between
> barcodes versus human-readable labels generally favors the *latter*,
> especially regarding *points 1 and 2 above*. 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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 *without incurring any changes in the database* (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.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> --
> 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)
>              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing list
> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
> society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20140301/a986ab00/attachment.html 