[Nhcoll-l] Barcodes and accession numbers
Dirk Neumann
neumann at snsb.de
Thu Feb 25 03:11:31 EST 2021
... maybe two more thoughts, picking up what Rob & John said yesterday:
Even though barcodes are ubiquitous and dirt cheap, most are designed to
be used and read once. As the barcode itself seems to be a reliable,
convenient way to accelerate collection management workflows, the
printing (as Hannu pointed out) is one of the weak points. Adhesives
(as barcodes usually are not printed directly onto herbarium sheets)
might be another. Barcodes stickers that peel-off in 10 or 20 years
because adhesives fail quickly turn a conveniently manageable collection
into a nightmare.
Same applies for any sort of external stickers (with or without
barcodes) e.g. in frozen collections. Therefore if sticker-dependent
systems are introduced, printers, inks, stickers and adhesives should be
selected with necessary care.
Another thing John pointed to is that barcodes are by definition
considered to be unique. This uniqueness however is not necessarily the
same as an unique identifier or an (not always unique) catalogue number
as we use them in natural history collections. We all know the fun
especially historic collections with a huge diversity of different
catalogue numbers have to offer. The point is - and John mentioned this
when referring to the Latin root of the word
catalogue/catalog/Katalog/catálogo - usually these numbers count upwards
and intend to introduce logic systems (e.g. by combining numbers and
digits) that give (hopefully) some reason for the sorting and/or
arrangement of the items they are get associated with.
A barcode cannot full fill this function. The number may be unique, but
it is erratic, without intrinsically encoding for anything, except the
purpose it has been given (could be the price of milk in a supermarked).
Some collections prefer to use customised barcodes to improve this, but
still, the application of barcodes to objects is random (even if you
peel them off in sequence).
Thus, if barcodes are introduced to collections to replace catalogue
numbers for whatever reason or purpose, it surely will work for some
time (as John pointed out), but such systems lack an important
component: the logic linkage to the collection and thus contained
objects (regardless of how unlogical the style or makeup of the
catalogue number itself might be).
It might be worth considering this if barcode systems are introduced.
With best wishes
Dirk
Am 24.02.2021 um 18:25 schrieb John E Simmons:
>
> Barcodes are useful for many purposes, particularly for sorting,
> inventory, and preparing loans, but a barcode should not ever be used
> a replacement for the unique numerical identifier of a museum
> specimen. A barcode can be a duplicate of a catalog number or can
> encode a catalog number, but it should not be a replacement for the
> simple reason that the useful life of a barcode is limited to the
> availability of the hardware and software necessary to read it.
> Barcodes have only been in widespread use since the early 1980s, which
> is a mere blip in the length of time that museum specimens are useful,
> and they are already being rapidly displaced by QR codes and RFID tags
> (and neither of these will be around in another 50 years, either). It
> is highly unlikely that the barcodes in use today will be readable in
> another 20 years.
>
> It is imperative that as managers of collections, we consider the
> long-term usability of the collections and data that we care for.
> Databases and barcodes are useful tools, but they are not permanent.
> We must consider the future cost, liability, and carbon footprint of
> continually upgrading databases (which is always fraught with loss and
> data degradation), and the fugitive nature of tools that come to us
> from industry, such as barcodes (once industry is done with the tool,
> it will disappear from the market). Without a clearly marked catalog
> number that can be read by a human being, specimens marked only with
> barcodes will be very difficult to manage, and collections will be
> faced with the enormously expensive task of replacing barcodes with
> catalog numbers on specimens that lack them.
>
> It should also be pointed out that you can achieve the permanence of a
> clearly marked catalog number with the convenience of a barcode by
> writing or printing the catalog numbers on tag or label and reading
> them with an optical scanner.
>
> The confusion between accession number and catalog number is the
> result of the words being used for years as synonyms, which they are
> not. From a legal aspect, the distinction is important. Accessioning
> is the process by which a museum takes possession of an object or
> specimen and thus becomes legally responsible for it; cataloging is
> the process or organizing into distinct categories. The word accession
> is derived from the Latin word /accessio/, meaning increase; catalog
> is derived from the Latin /catalogus/, meaning a counting up.
>
> The importance of the accession number is that it should be the number
> that links all information (documentation) about the object or
> specimen and its acquisition. For this reason, such documents as bills
> of sale, permits, permissions, import/export declarations, field
> notes, etc. should all be marked with the accession number.
>
> All museums use (or should use) a unique numerical identifier to
> distinguish individual objects or specimens, but because of the way
> collections are acquired, which number a museum uses and what that
> number is called varies. Because most art and history museums acquire
> objects one-by-one, they usually use an accession number both to
> register each object and link it to its documentation, and to identify
> it. However, in natural history museums we usually acquire objects in
> groups of more than one, and label them with a single accession
> number. To distinguish individual objects within the same accession,
> we assign individual catalog numbers to them (individually, or by lot,
> depending on the tradition in the discipline).
>
> What is important is that all museums are doing the same thing―we
> acquire objects, take possession of them (accession them), and then
> mark them with a unique identifier (an accession number or a catalog
> number).
>
> These are the definitions from /Museum Registration Methods/ (6^th
> edition, 2020):
>
> An accession is “one or more objects acquired at the same time from a
> single source constituting a single addition to the permanent
> collection.”
>
> Accessioning is “the formal process of taking possession of and
> recording of one or more objects for inclusion in the collection,” and
> thus the accession number is “a unique control number used to identify
> the object(s) in an accession.”
>
> A catalog is a “list of the contents of a collection,” and cataloging
> means “to organize the information about accessioned collection
> objects into categories; the creation of a record of information
> specific to an object,” thus a catalog number is “a number assigned to
> an individual object during the cataloging process.”
>
> For more detailed information on the legal aspects of what accession
> means in museums, see chapter four of A Legal Primer on Managing
> Museum Collections (3^rd edition, 2012).
>
>
> --John
>
>
> John E. Simmons
> Writer and Museum Consultant
> Museologica
> /and/
> Associate Curator of Collections
> Earth and Mineral Science Museum & Art Gallery
> Penn State University
> /and/
> Investigador Asociado, Departamento de Ornitologia
> Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 10:06 AM Miller, Andrew Nicholas
> <amiller7 at illinois.edu <mailto:amiller7 at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
> Now that we are barcoding our herbarium specimens, we are thinking
> about dropping our historical method of assigning internal
> accession numbers. Is there any reason to keep both numbers.
>
> Thanks,
> Andy
>
> –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
> Andrew Miller, Ph.D.
> Mycologist and Director of the Herbarium/Fungarium
> University of Illinois
> Illinois Natural History Survey
> 1816 South Oak Street
> Champaign, IL 61820-6970
> phone: (217) 244-0439
> email: amiller7 at illinois.edu <mailto:amiller7 at illinois.edu>
> website: http://wwx.inhs.illinois.edu/research/pi/amiller
> <http://wwx.inhs.illinois.edu/research/pi/amiller>
>
> Office address:
> Robert A. Evers Laboratory
> Room 2003
> 1909 South Oak Street, MC-652
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--
Dirk Neumann
Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
neumann(a)snsb.de
Postanschrift:
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Zoologische Staatssammlung München
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81247 München
Besuchen Sie unsere Sammlung:
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---------
Dirk Neumann
Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
neumann(a)snsb.de
postal address:
Bavarian Natural History Collections
The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Storage
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81247 Munich (Germany)
Visit our section at:
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