Evaluation location: Washington, United States
Beet seed packets in -20°C 1/11/2017
These packets were originally made by a student employee when Alan Hodgdon was responsible for the beets. The labels used when the packets were made had bar codes on them. For some of the labels, the bar code information was not the same as the main label ( eg. Beta vulgaris, PI 504181, was labeled Beta maritima for the species and the small print below the barcode read PI 504183 ). We didn't notice the error until after both the student and Alan were no longer working at the Station. Dave Stout, Jacqueline Cruver and I talked about what to do. What information on the label was the correct information for the seed in the packets?
After sorting through the packets that had incorrect label information, it was discovered that for all the labels the small print beneath the barcode was the same 6 digits and were all labeled maritima for the species, including some that were clearly vulgaris when we looked at them. This pointed to the error being made when the labels were printed. Each packet had an Accession# hand written in black marker on it which matched the Inventory# on the top of the labels. Since the black marker number agreed with the number in the TOP line of the label, it was assumed that the Inventory Suffix in the top line of the label was correct also. New labels with the Inventory prefix, inventory number, inventory suffix and inventory type and correct species and correct info in the bar code were made and put on the packets. In addition, a red arrow and additional label explaining the label change was added to the back of each packet to indicate the packets with questionable original labels.
Barbara Hellier, Beta curator
We assumed the top line on this label was correct, because the hand written number on the back was PI 504181. The rest of the info on this label is considered incorrect, so we made another label with the correct data for PI 504181 87ncei01
When we found a label with errors we put this label on the back:
Old label from around 1996 had
wrong TAXON, NAME, BARCODE etc.
Accession# was used to relabel