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 124 · DO #1718 · 72_Degener_Bx7FF33_r

Collection
Otto Degener (1899–1988) papers
Item/Folder
Typed Manuscripts By The Degeners, 1946–1962, n.d.
Digital Object
DO #1718, page 124
Collection-level dates
1915–1985, n.d.
Open PDF at page 124 ↗

Page transcription

2. It should concentrate on producing an illustrated, local Flora before more and more of the local flora is exterminated and lost forever to our ken. We are presently living in a land of living fossils.

3. It should explore our botanically unknown islands, with the aid of Army or Navy helicopters or with one of its own, similar to explorations initiated by the N.Y. Bot. Garden in South America.

4. It should finance the immigration of young, aggressive Mainland and Foreign botanists and graduate students to study the flora from all angles, not simply taxonomically. The only professional workers presently vitally interested in Hawaiian Taxonomy are Chook, the Degeners, Doty, Nosberg, Krajina, Lemoureux, Neal, Rook, Sheriff, Skottsberg, St. John and Yuncker, most between 60 and 85 years of age and most not local residents. What the Bishop Museum can accomplish under leadership of an Entomologist like Gressitt in his field, this or another institution can accomplish in the field of Botany. Funds are needed.

5. It should concentrate on eradicating past, unwise plant introductions tending to displace the endemics. So many intelligent people are aghast at the destruction of a painting by a famed artist yet, inconsistently, think nothing about the extermination of a plant or animal that has evolved to its present unique state after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

6. It should refrain from wholesale introduction and planting of exotics to the Islands lest they escape to decimate still more the native flora; any exception should be the introduction and planting of such specimens in Foster Botanical Garden, an effective quarantine by its location within the confines of the crowded city against infecting our typically Hawaiian native wilderness. To distribute such plants freely to the public should be curbed.

7. It should attempt to educate the population to reduce herbivores introduced as game, advocating the introduction of game birds as a substitute for hunters. It should educate the population into realizing that most of the aims listed as "Conservation" in this State are actually EXPLOITATION and EXTERMINATION of the native biota with unprecedented speed and ruthless thoroughness. The Federal Government is materially helping in this holocaust.

8. It should possess sufficient acreage to cultivate plants under controlled conditions (Pritchardia taxm, for instance) for their better understanding.

9. It should concentrate in educating the coming generation rather than cater to a handful of tourists. For this purpose a central location, like that of Foster Botanical Park is nearly ideal. Would buses of school children visit a botanical garden in the country?

10. It should purchase outright exceptionally unique areas (like the "Nature Conservancy" on the Mainland), patrol them against inroads of introduced herbivores and weeds, and the occasional clever machinations of some local politician. Areas in mind on Kauai are Napali Coast, Lehuamekano, Hoary Head; on Oahu are Kaala not occupied by FAA installations, Waianae and Koolau rainforests; on Molokai, north shore and rainforest summit ridge; on Maui, Puu Kukui and Eke on the West and rainforest adjacent to the National Park on the East; on Lanai, rainforest on both sides of Munro Trail; on Hawaii, most of windward Kohala to its