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 7 · DO #4303 · 131_Fogg_Bx3FF5_r

Collection
John Milton Fogg Jr. (1898–1982) papers
Item/Folder
Lawrence, George Hill Mathewson, 5 January 1950 – 9 July 1962
Digital Object
DO #4303, page 7
Collection-level dates
1923–1981
Open PDF at page 7 ↗

Page transcription

from Fogg

May 23, 1950

Dr. George H. M. Lawrence,
Bailey Hortorium,
Sage Place,
Ithaca, New York

Dear George:

I have examined your elementary taxonomy syllabus with a great deal of interest and am now returning it with these few comments. First let me say that I think you have put together a very comprehensive and well-considered series of topics in what for the most part appeals to me as a logical sequence. My only reservation concerning the plan has to do with the feasibility of attempting to cover so much ground in a one-term elementary course.

Naturally my first reaction has been to compare your syllabus with what I do myself and I would say at the outset that what you have incorporated in this plan constitutes for me material for two distinct courses. In my beginning course in taxonomy, which is two hours lecture and four hours laboratory each week during the Spring Term, I attempt to accomplish little more than a straight descriptive job, taking up in the Engler sequence in the lectures about forty families of Angiosperms (Pteridophytes and Gymnosperms are handled in separate courses by other members of the Department). In covering these forty families I attempt to avoid the monotony, to which you make proper reference in your second paragraph, by introducing from time to time a minimum of material dealing with nomenclature, phylogeny, plant geography, economic botany, plant exploration, etc. Even when dealing with an individual family I spend usually only about five minutes on the morphological characteristics of the family, then twenty or twenty-five minutes on interesting examples, the ornamental or medicinal importance of individual genera or species, significant facts of a historical nature (such as the importance of Oenothera and Datura in genetics), as well as observations drawn from field experience in this and other countries. I make frequent use of specimens, both fresh and dried, illustrations, slides, and visits to the greenhouse; and, of course, from April to the end of the term the class is taken on field trips once a week, taught how to collect, how to use and construct keys, etc. I find it impossible in this course to have the laboratory material follow the lectures in all cases, simply because flowering material from the greenhouse or gardens is not always available on the day that that particular family is taken up in lecture. In other words, this is a pretty orthodox introduction to systematic botany of the Angiosperms presented with a real attempt to introduce variety and to show the relationship of descriptive botany to other and more dynamic phases of the plant sciences.

In a separate course entitled "Principles of Systematic Botany," I deal with most of the subjects outlined in detail in your syllabus. My approach is primarily historical but by the middle of the term we are over into phylogeny, nomenclature, systems of classification, bibliography and biosystematics.