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:

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 218 · 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 218
Collection-level dates
1948–1977
Open PDF at page 218 ↗

Page transcription

page 6

Mr. Cesalpino was best known amongst taxonomists for the fact that he established a group of organisms which we now know and he used the same term or something similar to it. I don't know whether Mr. Cesalpino used that ending, Leguminosae as we know and they use today, was a group of organisms put together by Mr. Cesalpino on a different basis than had been done in the past. Other early authors were able to recognize such things as the compositae, these are terms I am sure that are in all of our vocabularies. We know approximately what these are. There are other families of plants recognized by us today which were very early established because of some inherent quality of the organisms. In the case of this particular group, it would certainly be the fruiting structure, this particular group would certainly be the total flowering mechanism that is the inflorescence structure, the inflorescence. We, incidentally, may recognize that in an historical development of things that there are in most of the plant families that we use today, the ending on the plant families is different from this. For instance let us take Onagraceae. This ending aceae is most typical of plant family names. What is recognized we don't use that one on some of these such as the Compositae and Leguminosae is that very early these very striking groups of related organisms were put together, and only later in time did we get this in here and this is an historical development that these people decided they wanted to recognize that somebody earlier had indeed done something useful. And so they have maintained those two forms for the plant families. Now shortly after Cesalpino and such people had discovered/Compositae and the Leguminosae and others of this nature, Linnaeus came along and his first endeavors intended to make some sort of an identifying system, and he used the "sexual system" for his classificatory scheme published in 1734. What this sexual system did was to essentially take counts of things, Counts of numbers of stamens, counts of numbers of petals, etc. Wherever he found flowers with the stamen numbers the same, he put them together, and I think he had/total