Reusing item barcodes

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
One of our catalogers is routinely re-using barcodes, so she might be down in the 100,000's. In theory I know that we are supposed to have the ability to assign whatever barcode we wish but it gives me a queasy feeling. Could doing that be problematic?

Resolution:
Aleph issues a message "Duplicate barcode" if you try to enter in an item barcode which already exists. Thus, there is no real chance of any major problem....

There could be a hypothetical problem if you were using SQL to search for a particular barcode in the z30h item history file: the barcode would exist in the z30h_barcode field of the z30h records of both the deleted item and the current one. But frankly, I can't think of any reason to be doing this, so I think that that can be ignored as a possible concern.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013