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.

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Page 59 · DO #1521 · 392_blunt_FF4_r

Collection
Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt (1901–1987) correspondence
Item/Folder
Correspondence, 1980–1987
Digital Object
DO #1521, page 59
Collection-level dates
1959–1987, n.d.
Open PDF at page 59 ↗

Page transcription

16 April 1982

Mr. Wilfrid Blunt
The Watts Gallery
Compton, Guildford
Surrey, England

Dear Mr. Blunt:

I have requested and been sent a review copy of Martyn Rix's
The art of the plant world: The great botanical illustrators and their
work, published in the United States by The Overlook Press, no date.
Unfortunately, my review will not be totally favorable.

Doubtless you have seen a copy. The art of botanical illustration
seems to be the basis for parts of Rix's text. I note similarities, for
example, in your own description of the Codex vindobonensis on page 10
(your second edition) and Rix's on page 12, your account of Maria Merian
on page 127 and Rix's on page 73, and your notes about Redouté beginning
on page 176 and Rix's beginning on page 152. He credits you with some
quotations or ideas, but seems also to follow your outline, even to
some extent in chapter headings.

Our Bibliographer, Gavin Bridson, previously Librarian at the
Linnean Society, received credit for assisting with photographs. Gavin
has told me that the author had nothing to do with the illustrations,
which chiefly were selected at the library by Ian Cameron. Indeed the
text contains no citations to illustrations. One does not learn, in
reading about F. H. Round, for instance, that there is a full-page color
illustration of his work located in another chapter. The illustration
is indexed, however.

Redouté does not merit a chapter as do "Linnæus and Ehret."
Wallich could appear under "The coming of lithography," "Victorian India,"
or one of the two chapters on floras -- "Floras and florilegia" and
"Floras from around the world." I have no idea where Rix found the
number 373 as the artists represented in the Hunt Botanical Library
(the Library of course is only one department of the Institute).

The book is undated, but probably was published in 1981.
Therefore it is possible that the author did not learn of our Torner
Collection of Sessé and Mociño Biological Illustrations. Since Rogers
McVaugh writes that "there is no more romantic story in botanical history
than that of the paintings that were made by the artists of the Royal
Botanical Expedition ...," and since Rix's slant is on botanical exploration,
it is regrettable that neither Sessé, Mociño, Echeverría, Cerda,
or even Charles III is mentioned (Charles I and IV are listed in the
index).