Jennifer,

It is possible to do away with paper labels for the great majority of
slides. You have to remember, however, that with a slide etcher or printer
the info has to be put on the slide before sectioning, so there is some
inflexiblity there. Also, the etched labels don't look as nice as paper
labels. If you can accept that you will still need paper labels occasionally
you can do most of the labeling with the slide etcher or printer. Then you
only have to see if you can afford the machines!

We have the TBS slide and cassette labelers and like them a lot. You can put
a lot of info on the slide with this system. For the most part it works
great. One thing we found out is that sometime the etched slides break in
our DAKO autostainer; apparently from stress points caused by the etching
and the way the DAKO plastic slide racks hold the slides.

The TBS system can also be interfaced with some LIS's which can save time in
certain circumstances.

We use the etcher to label all the slides with the accession number, the
date and the tech initials. For our special stains, IHC and ISH experiments
we make paper labels (actually Nalgene poly-paper) which are printed on the
laser printer. The info for the labels comes from our lab database system
(MS-Access)and needs no extra work (typing) to produce.

Even if you use a database just to type in label information and then print
on a laser printer it will be faster than typing in a typewriter because you
can set some info to repeat or increment automatically and can copy and
paste. If you can get your LIS to print labels or export info to label
printing software you will save a lot of time.

Tim Morken, B.A., EMT(MSA), HTL(ASCP)
Infectious Disease Pathology
Centers for Disease Control
MS-G32
1600 Clifton Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30333
USA

email: tim9@cdc.gov
       timcdc@hotmail.com

Phone: (404) 639-3964
FAX:  (404)639-3043


----Original Message Follows----
From: Jennifer Saunders <histoed@yahoo.com>
To: HistoNet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: slide labeling choices
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 21:08:38 -0800 (PST)


Hello all
We are looking into different ways to label slides and
was hoping some of you might have some suggestions. I
kind of like the idea of using a slide
labeling/etching system and doing away with labels all
together. Is this realistic or just fantasy? What are
your experiences? I have heard that some paper label
systems are more of a pain as far as entering all the
information through the computer and so don't really
save any time. Any and all input welcome.

Thanks
Jennifer Saunders H.T.


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