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 14 · DO #4596 · 116_Van%20Schaack_Bx9FF21_r

Collection
George B. Van Schaack (1903–1983) papers
Item/Folder
Ewan correspondence — Bicentennial Symposium & Socieities, 1974–1978
Digital Object
DO #4596, page 14
Collection-level dates
1918–1981
Open PDF at page 14 ↗

Page transcription

THE GREATEST HERBAL EVER PREPARED IN ENGLISH
WITH MORE THAN 2700 FINE WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PLANTS OF THE WORLD

The out-of-print value of this great work, now first offered inexpensively, has risen to $1,000 per copy and more!
Over 1700 pages, 81/2 x 121/4, weight 91/2 lbs!

THE HERBAL
OR
GENERAL HISTORY OF PLANTS
JOHN GERARD
THE COMPLETE 1633 EDITION AS REVISED AND ENLARGED BY
THOMAS JOHNSON
CLOTHBOUND $42.50 ($50 after Dec. 31, 1975)

A Brief History of a Monumental Book
John Gerard (1545-1612) was a barber-surgeon in London, the superintendent of the gardens owned by Lord Burghley in London and Hertfordshire, tender of his own legendary garden said to include over 1000 varieties of plants, and eventually the herbarist to King James I. In 1590 he published his HERBAL. Then in 1633, Thomas Johnson brought out a revised and enlarged edition of Gerard's book to which he added more than 800 plant descriptions and 700 illustrations, making the new Gerard HERBAL, the edition reproduced here in full, a conspectus and summation of Renaissance knowledge of plants, treating 2850 plants in all with the best available written accounts and graphics of the age. Far and away the greatest herbal ever prepared in the English language, it has served as the source or model (through abridgment or selection) of everything that has been prepared since.

Written in a lively Elizabethan style, brisk, concrete and colorful, it conveys a world of amusing contemporary folkways about plants; as Gerard says about the eggplant for "middle apple":

The people of Toledo do eat them with great devotion being boiled with fat flesh, putting thereto some scraped cheese, which they do keep in vinegar, honie salt pickled all Winter to procure Lust. Pterus Bellonius and Hermolaus Barbarus, report that in Egypt and Barbary they use to eat the fruit of Mala insana boiled or roasted under ashes, with oile, vinegar and pepper, as people vse to eat Mushrooms. But I rather wish Englishmen to content themselves with the meat and sauce of our own country, then with fruit and sauce eaten with such peril...

Gerard tried to combine several worlds of plant-value in this gigantic volume: descriptions (supplemented by accurate drawings), gardening experience, historical and geographical information, and, most important of all for him and his contemporaries, the traditional medical use of every plant known. As a result this is far and away the largest compendium of the herbal knowledge and beliefs of the Greek and Roman world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.
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