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 157 · DO #1679 · 72_Degener_Bx6FF27_r

Collection
Otto Degener (1899–1988) papers
Item/Folder
National Science Foundation Papers V, 1959–1960, n.d.
Digital Object
DO #1679, page 157
Collection-level dates
1915–1985, n.d.
Open PDF at page 157 ↗

Page transcription

studied before it is too late. We owe to future generations a representative set of herbarium specimens of our unique Hawaiian flora that we, due to commerce, ignorance and vandalism, are rapidly exterminating.

Though the collecting, describing and illustrating of the native flora is of prime importance, the introduced flora must not be neglected. Exotics should be collected as herbarium specimens and preserved as proof of their arrival in the Hawaiian Islands at a certain date. Comparison centuries hence of these pioneers with their descendants in the Islands may give clues as to the rapidity of speciation and other evolutionary problems as yet unformulated.

But to pile up Hawaiian specimens in the main herbaria of the world as I have done since 1922 hardly advances the Science of Botany. The material should be made available as soon as possible in print to botanical institutions in the Islands and elsewhere, and to local schools. So that interested workers should not be obliged to wait many decades before a complete Flora Hawaiensis becomes available, I publish fascicles of various lengths at irregular intervals, distributing 100 sets to them. The remaining copies are stored until a sufficient series accumulate for binding in book form.

The first fascicle appeared June 31, 1932, followed by 61 others and ending with fascicle 12/23/38 as rising printing prices exhausted my modest private fortune. The project was dying. Finally, in desperation, The New York Botanical Garden approached the National Science Foundation for help on my behalf in 1956, enabling Mrs. Degener and me to publish 24 additional fascicles with the result that Book 5 was completed and Book 6 to 361 pages of the planned 450. The present appeal for a 5-year grant is to complete Book 6, work up the material collected in the Islands with and without help of the previous NSF grants, and work toward completion of the Flora Hawaiensis. Actually, this goal can never be attained because of the constant introduction, year after year, by accident and design of species that deserve inclusion in an up-to-date work. The loose-leaf character of the present Flora provides for just such a contingency.