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 40 · DO #4666 · 231_Rogers_Bx2FF27_r

Collection
David James Rogers (1918–2007) papers
Item/Folder
Taximetrics Course - Student Reports, 1966–1968
Digital Object
DO #4666, page 40
Collection-level dates
1948–1977
Open PDF at page 40 ↗

Page transcription

have a classification you get some sort of higher order of meaning from the classification if you read the classifications correctly, if you try to understand them.
We just don't know how far any individual can go in his interpretation of the classification once it performed. Many/individuals have gained some sort of ability to carry on a little bit farther the kind of thing that they are interested in doing if they have a classification available to them. You may be a geneticist, for example, or a plant breeder. And if it is interesting to you to know what kooks of organisms you might possibly put together to gain some new genes system or to improve a crop land, or to make a double-flower petunia, and so forth. You might figure out how to go about it if there be no double-flowered petunia to make one by looking at a classification scheme and discovering what other things are there besides petunia in the petunia group. As a matter of fact, I don't even know the scientific name of petunia right now. But at any rate, this sort of thing you can discover. Some sort pf interrelationship of higher order of information that you may wish yourself to take off on. Furthermore, if you look at a classification an output from a classificatory operation, you will discover that a part of it is a sort of a very simple method of how to find a particular piece of information in a whole mess of information, namely, that which is called a diagnostic key, which is large a nice neat little technique for going through a very / population of things to get down to an individual. This sort of technique which is used by biologists, some with great success and some;with less success. At least the idea is involved there. So I decided that this was an interesting sort of area that I was interested in.

There is a possibility of using these methods that taxonomists use in the whole process of learning. It seems to me that what happens when a taxonomist is operating is that he is making judgments on the value of pieces of information in a sort of comparative way. How does this fit with this one? What is the likeness in the similarities, if you will, between two particular pieces of information?