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 174 · DO #4225 · 182_Goodspeed_Bx3FF65_r

Collection
Thomas Harper Goodspeed (1887–1966) papers
Item/Folder
Family Solanaceae; Reiche: Flora de Chile, undated
Digital Object
DO #4225, page 174
Collection-level dates
1923–1963
Open PDF at page 174 ↗

Page transcription

land-owners in the valley of Chanchamayo, pursue the work of their father, obtaining an appreciable herbarium (B M); Mrs. F. E. Hinckley realizes an excursion to the foot of the Volcano Chachani, about 10 kilometers from Arequipa, where she obtains a small but very interesting collection of plants (G) and Colonel Stordy, Chief of the Agricultural Station of Chuquibambilla in Puno, visits the departments of the South collecting some Gramineae.

In this same period of time, the agronomy engineer, Christian Bues, German and naturalized citizen of the United States, carried on an extensive herborization in the province of Convencion of the department of Cuzco, specializing in lichens, Mucineas?, ferns and Orchideae. His collection that reaches more than 2000 numbers, he submitted to the botanical institutions of the great Republic of the North (U S, N I and G). He is the author of numerous articles on agriculture in the valley of Santa Ana, and a valuable monography entitled "La Coca en el Peru".

The underscribed, in charge of the regency of the Chair of Botany of the University of Cuzco began his work of herborization toward the close of the month of September 1922 and pursued this work in an intermittent manner and without any official assistance until September 1933, having succeeded in obtaining a collection of more than 3800 numbers (B C, U S, N I and F M and G). I gave special importance to the annotation of the common names of the plants for their publication with their respective scientific synonyms. The result of my studies is condensed in the work "Estudios sobre la Flora del Departamento del Cusco" (Studies on the Flora of the Department of Cuzco) (Vol. I, Lima, 1930 and Vol. II, Cuzco, 1933).

There followed the expedition of agronomy engineer Wilson Papenae of the Section of Industrial Plants of the Department of Agriculture of the United States who studied, during the years 1921 and later in 1924, the agricultural recourses of the country, the remarkable one realized in 1922 by Prof. I. Francis Macbride, Conservator of the Department of Botany of the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago, in company with William Teathustone, student of the University of