Storage Facilities

Hierarchical structure

Bika structures Sample Storage positions uniquely in a hierarchy of 'containers', starting with a Storage facility which may contain a number of storage rooms, each containing fridges or cupboards with shelves where the samples are stored at Storage Positions, arranged on a 2 dimensional grid

Storage Facilities can be a building or room, or any other top level grouping of storage containers such as more rooms or fridges. Since Storage facilities can be off site in some cases, telephone numbers and email addresses for them may also be maintained

Containers in Facilities

If the facility is a single room, the next level of Container will be individual cupboards, shelving systems, fridges, freezers or cryogenic tanks. In this example we use a freezer room filled with refrigerated storage units

New fridges can be added as containers in the room from the [Add container] button

Each of the freezers will have containers such as shelves in them, see the expanded freezer below

The availability of storage space in each container can be read off the capacity used percentage in the Samples column. Red indicates that the fridge is full and has no free space available

Sample Containers

Each container in the hierarchy can be subdivided into more containers to make up a Storage Position address. In the final instance, the Sample positions are in a 'Sample Container' in which positions are laid out in 2 dimensions, rows and columns, mapping to say a box or tray of Samples, or a cane of sample positions in liquid Nitrogen tanks

Sample Containers are created inside bigger Containers, by using the [Add sample container] button in stead of [Add container]

The container is configured with a number of rows and columns to constitute uniquely addressed positions in it

The Samples in such a container can be viewed as a list

Sample list for a Sample Container in Bika Open Source LIMS

or in a 2 dimensional representation of the container

where Samples van be added to or removed from the container. See the next chapters