Museum collections have underpinned scientific research for centuries. But physical specimens in boxes and drawers don't easily lend themselves to the research techniques of the new millennium. "How can we apply these techniques to natural history collections, especially when much of the intrinsic i nformation a specimen has to offer is difficult to quantify?" asks Katja Seltmann, director of UC Santa Barbara's Cheadle Center for Biodiversity Ecological Restoration. Enter the Big Bee Project: a pioneering initiative to bring natural history collections into the century of AI, big data and networked databases. ...read more read less