| A relatively unknown but extremely valuable treasure of Naturalis, the Dutch National Museum of Natural History at Leyden, is the collection of logbooks of the researchers and later biologists and geologists who sailed on board the ships of the Dutch East Indies Company. Over the centuries the logbooks have been treated with the same care as the collected animals and fossils. The value of the collection lies therefore in the combination: the logbooks are the key to information and knowledge about the collection, which is essential for research into the description and evolution of animal species. The wealth of information in all these materials necessitates the development and application of technological tools for data mining. The MITCH project aims at using data mining with language and information technological means to convert logbooks into searchable databases. |
