Jim Blake
ENSR, 89 Water Street
Woods Hole, MA 02543
wrote:
(lots of text about barcoding books, which of course is easy to
do and which are *not* that similar to musums, omitted)
I could envision a situation where loans
coming to end of term could be readily identified by a tickler program
or something that would alert the curatorial assistants to remind the
scientist to extend or return the loan. All these tools do is make
life easier and allow the few individuals working in museum collections
to be more efficient in their work.
But what does this have to do with barcodes? We already use numbers
on specimens and loan management software is already in use in lots of
museums. Everybody assumes barcodes are something special. I
predict with 3-4 years they will be obsolete, that scanners will read
Times Roman numbers as well as they read |||\|/!! (put your favorite
barcode here). Such scanners already exist, but accuracy problems
are not yet solved.
Obviously, there may be technical problems with putting such labels
inside of jars with alcohol; associating them with small pinned
insects; or dry stored molluscs in little boxes. Given all that we
have achieved in recent years, including the ability to send this
e-mail message, I am sure that someone will come up with convienent
solutions to those problems.
Feel free to do so, I've spent a lot of time trying, how about you?
4 messages in edu.ku.nhm.mailman.taxacom, Bar Codes in tracking samples
