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 9 · DO #4535 · 116_Van%20Schaack_Bx7FF3_r

Collection
George B. Van Schaack (1903–1983) papers
Item/Folder
Correspondence L–M (1 of 2), 1964–1972
Digital Object
DO #4535, page 9
Collection-level dates
1918–1981
Open PDF at page 9 ↗

Page transcription

Hunt Botanical Library
Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15213

12 January 1970
(Dictated 8 January 1970)

Miss Carla E. Lange
Missouri Botanical Garden
2315 Tower Grove Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri 63110

Dear Miss Lange:

The January/February issue of the Missouri Botanical Garden Bulletin has just come to hand and I'm pleased to read your account of Parkinson's herbal. You may receive a few raised eyebrow comments from readers who will recognize that the portrait of Parkinson as reproduced is not that of an engraving, since it is devoid of burin or scribe lines. Our portrait of Parkinson is in oils on an oak board. The credit line under the reproduction "Todd Studio" suggests that it was they who made the photograph from the original in our collection, whereas the photograph for the reproduction was supplied by us. It is customary to provide a credit line for the photographer who made the photograph from the original subject, and not for one who may have copied another photograph, or who made the halftone plate. I write you of these matters for your own information and without thought that any reference to them should be made in any future issue.

The reproduction of the famous woodcut of the gardener working in his private nursery on p. 29; which is in Lonicerus, has its origin not in Lonicerus but in Christian Egenolph's Lustgärten und Pflanzungen (Strasbourg, 1530). You will find a reproduction of the original woodcut in the Hunt Catalogue, vol. 1, pl. V. Egenolph himself is generally credited with having made the woodcut. So far as is known, this is the first publication of an illustration of a gardener working with ornamental plants.

On p. 6, in your Parkinson account, you report that Parkinson's Theatrum and Gerard's Herbal were the two main pillars of botany in England till the time of Ray. Here, one must not forget the significance in England of Henry Lyte's translation of Dodoen's Herbal, which he named "A Niewe Herball" (1758), so popular and so much in demand at that time as to go-through two subsequent editions extending the contents far beyond Dodoen's original. The third edition was published in 1595. The interrelationships between the second and third editions of this, and the first edition of Gerard, has been the subject of much study, since Gerard has openly been accused of plagiarism. While the