Plant Label procedure

Owned by Chris Hoffman
Last updated: Jan 07, 2013Version comment
3 min read

In SAGE, the Botanical Garden has a procedure called Volunteer Labels. Volunteer propagators create data for labels that get printed on a special tags, the kind you see stuck in plant pots or in gardens.  These are usually for plant sales and include information like taxonomy, common name, family, and planting or feeding instructions.  The volunteers use a separate table for this purpose and effectively manage a different set of taxonomic names.  However, a plant label can be seeded from an accession record which will then bring in the taxonomic name elements from the accession record. 

A separate SAGE procedure, called Plant Tags, is similar but was designed to be used by Botanical Garden staff (rather than volunteers).  It was never really used, but was designed to allow staff to create a more expanded plant label (with collection information) from a propagation record.

Currently, these labels are printed on the special tags to a special thermal printer via Taggit Pro, label formatting software used by gardens.  Currently, Taggit Pro connects to SAGE via an ODBC connection.

We propose to build a new procedure, initially called Plant Labels, that will be used by staff and volunteers to print plant labels of different types.

Steps

  • Create a new taxonomy vocabulary, "Plant Labels" or similar, populated with taxonomic names derived from the SAGE data.
  • Create a new procedure, "Plant Labels" or similar. Schema will be similar to SAGE Volunteer Labels (plus SAGE Pot Tags?) though mapped to CollectionSpace's way of doing things.
  • Add batch procedure on cataloging, "Create Plant Label", that will populate a Plant Label procedure record from the accession information
  • Add batch procedure on Plant Labels, "Clear plant label queue"
  • Derive and migrate taxonomic data for Plant Labels taxonomy vocabulary, handling hybrid names as needed.
  • Migrate SAGE volunteer label data into CSpace Plant Label records.

Questions

  • Is this needed day one, or can volunteers continue to use SAGE until we have all the issues resolved?
  • How will Taggit Pro get the information in CollectionSpace?  Can we print to the thermal printer from iReport or a CSpace PDF? 
  • How will hybrid names from SAGE Volunteer Labels be handled? Right now, hybrid names entered into the Volunteer Labels screen and table in a variety of ways, but there are no MHP and FHP fields.  Are we willing to create taxonomic names in the Plant Labels taxonomy vocabulary that are unnamed hybrids? 
  • Can a read-only volunteer role invoke a batch process on Cataloging?
  • Is it OK to combine Pot Tags and Volunteer Labels?  Collection information from Cataloging would be copied into the Plant Label screen and could be edited and printed on Plant Labels. This would not allow volunteers to modify the original information on cataloging, but they could change information that had been copied onto the Plant Label screen.
  • Pot Tags have some fields that we do not understand, since it seems to be tied to a propagation record.
  • Can volunteers create relationships between a Cataloging record and a Plant Label record, via a batch process?
  • How is Number of Labels used by Taggit Pro?
  • Do we need the formatted HTML name for taxonomic names?  Or will that just be handled by Taggit Pro?

Plant Label procedure schema

  • Family (default taxonomy vocabulary?)
  • Taxonomic name (Plant Label taxonomy vocabulary, and default taxonomy vocabulary)
  • Common name (text)
  • Country name (or Locale?) - often includes things like "California Native"
  • Label Data (multi-line text note)
  • Number of labels (integer)
  • Print Labels (Yes/No dropdown)

From Pot Tag:

  • Garden location (default storage location vocabulary)
  • Collector (collectors organization vocabulary)
  • Ecology data (multi-line text note)
  • Propagation Date - how is this used, and should it be continued given that this prevented the SAGE procedure from being used?
  • Propagation Type - how is this used, and should it be continued given that this prevented the SAGE procedure from being used?
  • Activity Dates - how is this used, and should it be continued given that this prevented the SAGE procedure from being used?