QR Codes Could Easily Provide Information and Save Resources

I am impressed.

I happened upon the article “Canadian war graves at St Margaret’s Church, Bodelwyddan given QR code” on the North East Wales News website describing the new QR codes that have been implemented on the Canadian war graves of St. Margaret’s Church in Bodelwyddan, Wales.

These codes allow visitors to the graves to scan the QR codes with their smart phones and download information in English or French about the more than 17,000 Canadian service personnel who were assigned to Kinmel Park camp nearby after World War I’s end.

Although the majority of the Canadians buried at the church were victims of the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, a few are the graves of soldiers who were casualties of riots at the camp in March, 1919. The riot was the consequence of the anger felt by Canadian soldiers after the ships assigned to take them home had been put to use taking American soldiers back to the United States – especially since many of the Americans had not seen hostile action.

Reading about this unique initiative made my mind start to whirl off in a dozen different directions.

Previously I had posted about a ‘working’ vacation my family and I took to Nova Scotia. One event during this trip included our finding a huge cemetery with hundreds of family graves. QR codes such as those used in the graveyard described above could have saved us hours of time transcribing.

Can you imagine the positive impact of using this technology in ways that could benefit those accessing collections, documents, books, and sites related to any area of study or interest? So, I did a quick ‘Google’ search of the internet and learned that some are already experimenting with ways to implement this technology. I eagerly await the benefits of these and other future programs, possibly including:

• Archives and libraries using QR codes to safeguard against damage and deterioration of their collections through avoiding physical contact from staff, researchers and the general public. The QR code could be fixed to a protective sleeve, cover, envelope, file folder or other package linking the user to online access to any attachments or background information such as images, files, music, video and text.
• Museums providing QR codes at all exhibits to link to background information, images, documents, or other helpful attachments.
• Substantial reductions in the materials usage and costs of printed products by scanning QR codes in place of taking informational leaflets, flyers, etc. This could be used at government offices, businesses, schools, hospitals, museums, archives, libraries and numerous other possible sites.
• The ability to use information from QR code scans from flyers, magazines, newspapers, forms, etc. to automatically create to-do lists, shopping lists and/or orders to be sent electronically or accessed later for future action.

I’m sure there are numerous other possibilities. These are just the few that came to my mind at the moment.