How To Make Insect Labels In Excel

Specimen Labels

By Brennen Dyer

Labeling your specimens may non be the last matter that happens to them, simply it might exist the nigh of import. Without the information the label carries, an insect has very piddling scientific value. I'm not going to duplicate the efforts of the people who take written guides about how to design labels, though. Instead I'll be detailing the workflow I apply to produce labels. That is, the editing process, preparations, and press. However, I'll link to some blueprint guides with appropriate caveats.

I'm also providing templates for field number and determination labels in add-on to locality labels, but I mainly wrote this guide for locality labels considering those are the nigh open-ended. All the templates are available at the finish of the guide.

Resources Needed

• A decent printer. I use a consumer-course Brother laser printer, which is capable of 1200DPI. I've seen some bad labels that were conspicuously printed on an inkjet, so I advise avoiding those. Plus, laser toner is more than likely to exist alcohol-safe than what consumer inkjets utilize, but even laser printers tin autumn short in that respect.

• A text editor capable of handling oddly sized documents and pocket-size font sizes. I use Microsoft Word 2013 with good results, and information technology's a common piece of software. The template I provide is in .docx format, but yous may be able to open or recreate it in similarly-capable programs.

• Archival cardstock . Please apply archival paper, any you do. I've had labels pause in half because they were printed on common paper only 40 years ago, and the inconvenience of rescuing the information may cause your specimen to be thrown away instead. Only get some acid/lignin-free cardstock. 65lb is plenty, but if yous want to go fancy utilise high rag content, which is fifty-fifty more durable.

GOAL

The kind of information you want to display depends on who's going to be looking at the specimen and why, but you're ultimately limited by what was recorded near the specimen. If it was collected on a casual hike and you weren't maintaining detailed notes, and so only reporting where, when, and who is probably all it needs, and I consider those three pieces of information to be the absolute minimum regardless of why the specimen was nerveless. After all, it was a living creature and the least we can do is ensure its death will serve a useful purpose. Alternatively, if it was collected as part of a research project and has a lot of data associated with it, so a more complicated label (or labels) is likely called for.

FORMAT

In that location are probably equally many label formats equally there are collectors, so I'chiliad non here to tell you to make labels my manner. Instead, I'm simply going to show you how I brand them, based on what I picked up at the Bohart Museum. Had I learned to curate insects before attending UC Davis, I would take developed an entirely different arroyo just because I would have had to figure it out from scratch. The result certainly would take been extremely simplified labels, with only a town or landmark and the date. Merely because I've seen where many collections terminate up, my approach favors precision, but is certainly not the most rigid or information-dense representation possible.

Because it'due south widespread and familiar to virtually people, I use Microsoft Word. I'll provide a .docx template for full general use at the cease. If you want to skip the editing procedure, either because you want to experiment with characterization design without being primed by my advice or you already know how yous want to conform your label, then scroll to the bottom and collect your template.

Here's adecent guide most designing labels. Though I don't concur with all the communication given, it'southward quite thorough. For example, I only use decimal degrees (DD) for coordinates. Although DD and degrees minutes seconds (DMS) can both be entered into something like Google Maps merely fine, DMS can present challenges when databasing specimens, often requiring complicated conversions and/or concatenations to adapt them in databases. Decimal degrees are also more meaty and easier to type than DMS. In that location's a helpful table of decimal points and corresponding precision on Wikipedia. Anyway, the advice about typefaces in the label guide has claim, but I use Calibri (the default sans-serif font in Microsoft Word) without upshot. Certain, it has a less distinguishable capital "I", only in dates or two-letter state codes I don't notice it's a problem. For example, localities in Illinois would be United states: IL, which is unambiguous in Calibri. Similarly with dates such equally xi.II.2018, because the ones have clear projections distinguishing them from the roman numerals. Note that the typefaces on my site are not Calibri, so I encourage you to attempt unlike fonts in your word editor of choice.

For the Excel spreadsheets, which are the field number blanks and determination labels, you won't have to dig into the nitty-gritty stuff and so that they reflect your needs. Some basic Excel knowledge should exist all that'due south needed. That is, so the field numbers take your lawmaking prefix and the determination labels have your name you lot but have to replace the cells with new content. There aren't any numbering sequences or formulae to worry about.

EDITING

Assuming you're familiar with characterization design (see the link in the previous section if not), we can move on to editing. I personally use Word 2013, but newer versions of Give-and-take should work with minimal bug. My template has xiii columns, letter size in landscape (the choice of landscape layout was largely arbitrary), and 0.5" margins. I take three styles embedded in the document: one for a field/serial number header (relatively big and bold), another for all except the final line of the label, and the final way adds a 2pt space after the line for the last line of the label (and so there'south a gap for cut). All the label text is in 12pt Calibri, so I typically work at 500% zoom, depending on the screen resolution. Just type the start label, re-create, and paste equally many equally y'all need. I always add extra labels in case I miscounted or ruin a few during cutting. You might think that'south a waste of paper, but it's far more efficient than press off a whole new sail because you lot need a few extra labels. Amend safety than sorry, correct?

One affair I have the time to practice is rearrange the series I'm preparing to print so that they'll be easier to cut out and each series doesn't accept labels that are truncated by page breaks. Specifically, I cut and paste each series so that ones spanning more than one cavalcade showtime at the top of the folio, and any gaps are filled by ones that are less than a whole column tall. Here's a screenshot of a label batch I prepared for a project at the Bohart Museum that illustrates this.

As you tin can meet, any label series that is longer than a column starts at the summit of the folio, while ones shorter than a column are plant a suitable identify after those series. This makes it far easier to cut them out and reduces labels existence truncated and wasted. Another do good is it's much easier for less experienced volunteers/employees to handle the labels later on they've been cut because each series tin be a contiguous piece of paper. It's certainly non fool-proof, but information technology should significantly reduce the error rate.

Printing

Printing is the easiest footstep, in my experience. I tricky part could be fine-tuning the options, and in that location's one in particular that's difficult to find: Improve Toner Fixing. This is an choice on lazer printers and in my case is found in the organisation print dialogue>Advanced>Other Printing Options. This has helped my labels to be more than durable, especially when rubbed.

The Excel spreadsheets should print fine unless your changes take significantly alter column widths or row heights. To deal with that simply adjust the print area, institute in the Folio Layout ribbon particular.

Template Files

Locality Labels (.docx) Field Numbers (.xlsx) Determination Labels (.xlsx)

I desire these templates to exist used by anyone who can benefit from them. If you have any questions well-nigh how to use them, then please mail a comment. I'm not notified of new comments, but I'll check periodically. Alternatively, you can send me an electronic mail. I'll update this based on feedback or equally I come up with improvements.

Note that my database number template is on a defended page under Buildables>Database. I chose to practise that considering information technology'south office of maintaining a database, which is a large project.