Abundance analysis of barium and mild barium stars

Aims.We compare and discuss abundances and trends in normal giants, mild barium, and barium stars, searching for differences and similarities between barium and mild barium stars that could help shed some light on the origin of these similar objects. Also, we search for nucleosynthetic effects possibly related to the s-process that were observed in the literature for elements like Cu in other types of s-process enriched stars. Methods.High signal to noise, high resolution spectra were obtained for a sample of normal, mild barium, and barium giants. Atmospheric parameters were determined from the Fe