Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
A Research Division of Carnegie Mellon University

Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Search a large and growing portion of our online collections, including handwritten documents.
PROTOTYPE

This prototype uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, including a vision-language model (VLM) capable of reading handwritten documents as well as typed and printed text, to create searchable transcriptions of digitized materials in the Hunt Institute Archives. This makes it possible to search the textual contents of individual pages, including material that may not be described in the archival catalog.

Use Keyword search for specific words, names, dates, scientific names, or phrases. Try Semantic search (experimental) to describe a topic, question, or kind of material when you do not know the exact wording used in the documents.

About the AI-generated transcriptions

The transcriptions are generated automatically from page images and may contain errors, especially with difficult handwriting, unusual names, multiple languages, image-quality problems, or complex layouts. They are intended primarily as a discovery aid rather than authoritative transcriptions.

Each result provides the generated transcription and links to the original digitized material and associated archival description so that readings can be checked against the source. The transcription workflow uses AI models run locally by the Hunt Institute.

About Keyword and Semantic search

Keyword search is the default and matches the wording in the transcriptions. Results contain all your terms. Use quotes for an exact phrase. Substring matching is supported, so aceae can find plant-family names ending in -aceae.

Semantic search (experimental) is useful when you know what kind of material you are looking for but do not know the words used in the documents. It ranks transcribed passages by similarity of meaning, so relevant results may not contain the exact words in your query.

Semantic queries can be broad research topics, descriptions of activities or relationships, or natural-language questions. For example:

plant collecting and fieldwork in South America medicinal, culinary, or other traditional uses of plants chromosomes and plant classification early herbals and botanical illustrations botanical institutions exchanging plants, seeds, and specimens microscopy and photomicrography in botanical research How did botanists and gardeners introduce plants from one region to another? grafting, budding, and propagation of tropical fruit crops

Semantic search is not a chatbot: a question is used as a search query, and the system returns archival passages that appear conceptually related to it rather than generating an answer or summary. Short descriptions and ordinary research questions generally work better than lists of disconnected keywords. Quotation marks have no special meaning in Semantic mode. Cross-language matching may work in some cases, but it should not be treated as translation.

Keyword and Semantic search are complementary. Keyword search lets you require particular wording; Semantic search can surface differently worded passages about the same subject. Depending on the research question, trying both can reveal different useful material.

Open a result: use the prominent page-and-transcription link to see the metadata, PDF, and full transcription. Keyword-search terms are highlighted in the transcription.

Archives Collections Database (ArchivesSpace): the Collection, Item/Folder, and Digital Object links open the corresponding archival records. Collection-level dates describe the collection as a whole, not necessarily the specific item or page.

If a PDF does not load: on the detail page, use the Digital Object link, click “Go to file” in ArchivesSpace, and navigate to the page number shown here.

Current limitations
  • Automated transcriptions can contain missing or incorrect text or unintended repetition. Difficult handwriting, image quality, unusual layouts, and multiple languages can reduce accuracy. Always consult the original page image when an exact reading matters.
  • Semantic search remains experimental. Its rankings are an additional discovery aid, not a complete or definitive set of relevant results, and highly ranked pages can sometimes be only broadly related.
  • This is an active prototype. Search coverage, transcriptions, functionality, and the interface may continue to change as additional archival material is processed and the system is improved.

← Back to results

Page 70 · DO #4183 · 182_Goodspeed_Bx1FF21_r

Collection
Thomas Harper Goodspeed (1887–1966) papers
Item/Folder
Jessup–Junge, 1939–1959
Digital Object
DO #4183, page 70
Collection-level dates
1923–1963
Open PDF at page 70 ↗

Page transcription

February 13, 1947
AIR MAIL

Mr. Rodney Wilcox Jones
100 Broadway Avenue
New Rochelle, New York

Dear Mr. Jones:

My field assistant in Peru, Senor Felix Woytkowski, has asked me to address you in response to your letter to him of some months ago concerning the possibility of his selecting orchids for you.

For more than a year, Senor Woytkowski's plant-collecting has been financed by funds provided by friends of this Botanical Garden to carry on its fourth expedition to the Andes and adjacent regions. All botanical products of his collecting, which include dried plant specimens, living plants (especially orchids and cacti), and seeds of new or little-known species primarily of scientific importance, become the property of this University.

We have received a considerable shipment of orchids from him. Most of them have not as yet flowered, but from the corresponding dried specimens and Woytkowski's notes, it appears that he may have found a number of new species. After many delays, he is now proceeding to the Peruvian-Ecuadorian frontier where the so-called "Cattleya Rex" has been collected, and I hope that in some months he will begin to ship us this and other orchids of the northwestern portion of the Peruvian Montaña.

I spent last summer in Colombia and continued the botanical exploration we began in 1942. Before leaving, I organized two expeditions which will be in operation for at least another six months. One is collecting parts of the Department of Antioquia, previously unexplored botanically, and the other in orchid country in the mountains on both sides of the Cauca Valley, but particularly in the southern Choco.

Although our greenhouse facilities are as yet rather limited, I hope to assemble in this Botanical Garden a representative collection of the orchid species of tropical America with emphasis upon those of ornamental value. As stocks accumulate from our expeditions and our correspondents in South America, I would be happy, should you be interested, to arrange an exchange of material with you as I have done with friends in England.

With best wishes,

Cordially yours,

THG:jd