Electronically Cataloguing Butterflies

Contact: Matthew Hayes, UMZC <mph51@cam.ac.uk>

The University's Museum of Zoology (UMZC) stores over two million specimens, were collected over 200 years by naturalists including Charles Darwin. Their age means most could not be electronically catalogued at the time of their collection so many had their details transcribed by hand into physical log books, inaccessible to most audiences. Your task is to use optical character recognition and machine learning to transcribe the notebook of one individual into an electronic database or spreadsheet. This may involve going behind the scenes and viewing collections usually inaccessible to the public.