barcodes, 19 July
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 15:48:21 -0800 To: barcode group:;;@elwha.evergreen.edu; From: "John T. Longino" <longinoj@evergreen.edu> Subject: barcodes, 19 July Sorry about the delay; I was out of town a few days, but I am ready to continue this discussion if anyone else is. Unique identifiers: I agree that establishing a global system of unique identifiers is of paramount importance. However, I have a pressing concern which is that the ALAS project is out of barcodes right now, and we have to do something right away (and so does INBio!). So my primary concern right now is deciding on a symbology. Code128: Mr Ackley's comments were extremely helpful, and I now see that Code128 will not work. I didn't realize that code128 already economizes on length when the data are just numbers, so that a code of alpha characters is longer than a code of number characters. Thus, the way INBio got a small enough code128 barcode was by having only numbers, and relatively few of them. I got some code128 samples from a company that sells barcode printing software, and there was no way to make an appropriate code small enough for insect specimens. Brian Brown alerted us to another limitation, which is that we need not only an institutional identifier, like LACM, but also a departmental identifier, like LACM ENT. I feel strongly that the symbology should contain the full unique identifier, including the alpha prefix identifying the institution/department. I really do want to be able to have a box with specimens from all different institutions, and read them all in with a scanner. What this means is that we must use a high density symbology, like code49 or micropdf417. This also means that there will never be a huge market. Can we generate enough of a market on our own, if all the major natural history museums move together? Code49: So there is still life in code49? It would be great if we could continue with this symbology, since we have so much invested in it already. I still have some questions about it though. First, roughly how much does the Intermec1470 cost? How are we going to plug it into a Mac (certainly a concern for me and the ALAS project)? Why are we getting mixed signals from Intermec itself about the availability of code49? I'd like to contact the people using code49 for APS film cartridges, and ask them about their satisfaction with the symbology and whether they plan to continue using it. Can we find these contacts? Can we get Intermec on-board, and find out how willing they are to work with the museum community? Regarding costs: there is concern about the high cost of using barcodes. The special scanners for reading high density symbologies are expensive, and the pre-printed labels cost about $0.05 apiece and come in minimum orders 25k or more. Small ecological projects cannot affort this sort of overhead. That is part of the impetus for using code128. If you assume the barcodes will only be of use internally to the project, then you can get away with code128, cheap scanners, and some software that prints the labels on a laserprinter. But natural history museums and similar repositories of specimens have different constraints. We may have to accept the higher costs of scanners and labels as part of the cost of doing business. A healthy development would be better collaborations between ecological projects and natural history museums, in which small projects contracted with particular natural history museums to provide barcodes and scanners (or access to scanners at the museum). ****************************************************** John T. Longino Lab I, The Evergreen State College Olympia WA 98505 USA longinoj@evergreen.edu Ants of Costa Rica on the Web at http://www.evergreen.edu/ants Project ALAS at http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/ALAS/ALAS.html ******************************************************
| Discover Life in America | Science | Unique Identifiers & Barcodes | Correspondence | John Longino - 19 July, 1999 |