Subject: Barcodes
Since I am new to the bulletin board, I am not sure this has been asked yet... Suellen Towers, Rare Books Cataloger at George Washington U., wants to make a case for NOT placing a pre-adhesived bar code directly onto the book plate of the rare books in her collection. I suggested several reasons why they should not be so stuck: - questionable pH of adhesive - migration of the adhesive through the bookplate and onto the boards - questionable pH of materials used for the bar code Can anyone back up these assumptions up with documentation ? I'm sorry, but Suellen was not able to give me the brand of bar code they are using. My suggestion to her for placement of the bar code was: If the printing on the bar code is good quality and if your photocopier has been "tuned up" you should be able to photocopy the bar code onto a piece of alkaline buffered bond paper and insert the paper slip into the rare book. A scanner should be able to read the photocopy. If there are any other bright ideas out there re: bar codes on rare books, please let me know. Charlotte B. Brown bitnet: c_brown@fandmlib Archives / Franklin & Marshall College **** Moderator's comments: Just a quick addition: perhaps even better than photocopying the bar code would be to generate the bar code originally on a computer and print it, perhaps with accompanying information (eg human readable callnumber) with a laser printer. A cooperative systems type ought to be able to knock something off in short-order. *** Conservation DistList Instance 4:2 Distributed: Wednesday, May 13, 1990 Message Id: cdl-4-2-004 ***Received on Sunday, 13 May, 1990