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 18 · DO #4677 · 231_Rogers_Bx2FF38_r

Collection
David James Rogers (1918–2007) papers
Item/Folder
Scientific Reviews, 1968
Digital Object
DO #4677, page 18
Collection-level dates
1948–1977
Open PDF at page 18 ↗

Page transcription

-5-

decision-making aids to the proposed "kit of tools" for the taxonomist and floristician.

In brief, a major thrust of the FNA Project will be to reduce the drudgery of floristic and monographic work to the bare minimum by applying machines to remove the human element wherever possible. This should result in reducing the taxonomist's work to its basic intellectual content, making him more scholar and less curator.

Users

The immediate users of FNA will be the authors, editors, and advisers of the project who produce the flora and information system and any other plant taxonomists who are concerned in some way with North American plants. Eventually, this means all plant taxonomists, and this primary community of users is represented on the international level by the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, on the national level in the United States and Canada by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and the systematic sections of the Botanical Society of America and the Canadian Botanical Association, and on the regional and state or province level by many smaller professional societies.

The secondary community of users includes the medical, biological, and agricultural scientists at large, but especially the ecologists, who, in organizing the International Biological Program (IBP), are generating insatiable taxonomic demands.

The ultimate users are the members of society who must depend in some manner on the existence of accurate, up-to-date knowledge about the kinds of plants in the world. This fact is becoming more obvious as society is becoming more conscious of its natural environment and the need for ecological insight when using natural resources.

Institutional Responsibility

The American Institute of Biological Sciences is an independent, non-profit organization representing and serving nearly all branches of the medical, biological, and agricultural sciences. It coordinates or administers a broad range of activities aimed at maintaining and improving communication among scientists in these fields. The AIBS represents, therefore, the ideal home for the FNA Project, particularly in view of the possibility that the proposed FNA information system will be adaptable directly to areas of biology other than floristics and taxonomy. Any general biological center or system logically should be developed within such a broadly based organization as the AIBS.

The Smithsonian Institution's offer to serve as the working headquarters for the Secretariat at least during the initial planning and development was accepted without hesitation by the AIBS, so that the FNA Project would have