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 20 · DO #1049 · 1_Allen_Bx1FF7r

Collection
Paul Hamilton Allen (1911–1963) papers
Item/Folder
Correll, Donovan Stewart (1908–1983), 1950–1959
Digital Object
DO #1049, page 20
Collection-level dates
1937–1963
Open PDF at page 20 ↗

Page transcription

ESQUINAS EXPERIMENT STATION
CIA. BANANERA de COSTA RICA
GOLFITO DIVISION

Palmar
January 16, 1953

Dr. Donovan S. Correll, Botanist
Specialty Crop Introductions
Plant Industry Station
Beltsville, Maryland

Dear Don:

Many thanks for sending the copy of the Orchids of Guatemala. Judging by your other work it will be a fine thing, and we are looking forward to seeing it with a great deal of pleasure. Our mails are slow, but we should have it within a week or two.

The position at the Fairchild Tropical Garden sounds very interesting. It would be much like the work at the Missouri Botanical Garden Tropical Station in Balboa, which we both enjoyed so much. Right now I am up to my eyes typing keys for my "Rainforests of Golfo Dulce", but I expect to have the job completed within about sixty days. If it were desirable, I could knock off for a week at any time and fly up to Miami for an interview.

We have had nearly eighteen years in the tropics, but I have felt for some time that I would like to get into some location that would not be quite so isolated. We could bring to them a herbarium of about 6000 specimens, containing many isotypes of Palms and Orchids, a good library on Tropical American botany, with many reprints, a very extensive series of Kodachrome slides of native and cultivated plants for lecture purposes, about 2000 black & white negatives of the same for publication, as well as nearly a hundred pen & ink drawings of Orchids.

Our work at Esquinas has been largely plant introduction, some 600 species having been established there during my time. As you know, we have had previous experience managing similar collections at Balboa (three years) Summit (two years) and the present location (five years). Published projects have been the Poisonous & Injurious Plants of Panama, the last half of the Orchids of Panama, a revision of the genus Cyanocheles, and miscellaneous squibs, mostly on Palms and Orchids. The present "Rainforests of Golfo Dulce" is still in manuscript, but will be published in CEIBA. It will cover some 437 species of trees, with descriptions of the ecological formations, both non-technical & orthodox keys, extensive utilization lists etc. as well as many illustrations.

I could give for references Dr. George T. Moore, Dr. David Fairchild, Dr. Emery Moore, Charles Schweinfurth and J. J. Ochse.

We hope that this finds all of you well. Please say hello for us to the Hodges.

As ever,