Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

Archives Text Discovery Platform prototype update: Search thousands of new pages in our Archives’ online collections through AI-transcribed full texts

The Hunt Institute is excited to announce additions to our public prototype of our Archives Text Discovery Platform (https://url.huntbot.org/3j), which allows users to perform full-text searches of our digitized Archives collections, including typed, printed and, most notably, handwritten documents. Taking advantage of recently developed natural language processing tools and advances in artificial intelligence, we have transcribed page images for nearly all the digital items currently catalogued in our Archives Collections database and made that text discoverable through a simple search interface, now available to the public.

At the time of launch, over 1,400 folders and items, amounting to more than 77,000 pages, were indexed. With our recent data ingest, there are now 2,000+ folders and items and 89,000+ pages, resulting in 20 million+ searchable words. A simple keyword search will return results from across the collections, including materials that would not otherwise have been found through their titles or metadata alone.

While OCR (Optical Character Recognition) transcription for printed texts has become common, many archives are still struggling to use it to its full potential, and including handwritten pages at this breadth remains a rare undertaking. Within the botanical community, most automation efforts have so far focused on specimen labels or on single, well-defined collections. Even many modern commercial HTR systems rely on having many already transcribed pages to train their models on the handwriting found within an organization's collections. By contrast, this prototype applies a general-purpose VLM (Vision-Language Model) across all our digitized archival materials, including letters, field notebooks and journals, and makes that text fully searchable.

Searching this data will produce a list of results that contain the keywords or phrases provided. Each result will link to a detail page that includes the digital object's PDF, initially set to the page on which the search terms were found, along with various pieces of metadata about the object and the collection to which it belongs. Links on that page will take users to the corresponding levels of description in our Archives Collections database. The page transcript itself, with search terms highlighted, appears below the PDF frame and can help users locate their keywords in the PDF's page image.

The current platform is only a prototype. There may be bugs, the interface may change, and we will likely add more features soon. We are looking into other enhancements, but did not want the development time for additional capabilities to prevent the public from being able to use what is already a powerful discovery tool, and so we have released this prototype in its current state, imperfections and all. We hope to keep the prototype evolving in public so that the world can use the working functionality today rather than waiting for perfection.

We would love your feedback as you explore. If you find something particularly interesting with this tool, please let us know about it. You may uncover things that nobody at the Institute even knows about yet! If this leads you to something that becomes an integral part of your research in a project, we would be delighted to hear about it. We would also like to hear if anything is not working as expected. Please use the Contact Us (https://url.huntbot.org/17) form and mention "Text Discovery Platform" or "ArchSearch" in your message. We welcome you to try out the prototype today, and let us know what you find!

Search | Archives

250 Years of Botany in America

As we continue to celebrate the history of botany in America for the 250th anniversary of our country, this month we visit Hawai'i with Archibald Menzies and David Douglas, who have dual naming rights to a "fir" of the Pacific Northwest; settle on the islands with Marie Catherine Neal and Otto Degener, who made careers there; and finish with a collection of botanists' correspondence from the 20th century. These informal lobby displays were curated by Christi Thomas, Computational/Archival Assistant, and Scarlett T. Townsend, Publication and Marketing Manager and Institute Historiographer.

Celebrating Women’s History Month | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

Celebrating Women’s History Month

We're concluding Women's History Month with a group project, featuring two men, three women and the Newe (or Shoshone) of Nevada. Together their work gave a generation of women the freedom of choice to make history on their own terms.

In 1937 William Andrew Archer (1894–1973) became director of the Nevada Indian Medicine Project. The project recorded the medicinal uses of plants by the indigenous people of Nevada, collected herbarium specimens and sent plant material to the University of Minnesota for pharmaceutical analysis. While Agnes Hume Scott Train (later Janssen, 1905–1991) acted as interpreter, Percy Train (1876–1942) collected Lithospermum ruderale Douglas ex Lehmann and interviewed the usually male elders of the Newe. However, with Edith Van Allen Murphey (1879–1968), the Newe women were more forthcoming, graciously sharing their medicinal uses of the plant, one of which was as a contraceptive. At the University of Minnesota Elizabeth Morrison Cranston's 1944 dissertation studied the effects of L. ruderale on the reproductive cycle of mice. This early research into L. ruderale formed the basis for the further research that eventually led to the birth control pill.

The findings of this project were summarized in Train, Henrichs and Archer, Medicinal Uses of Plants by Indian Tribes of Nevada (1941, Contr. Fl. Nevada 33). To read the report and the interviews, see our Archer collection. Please note that the items do reflect the time period's attitudes toward Indigenous Americans.

We hope you followed us on the former Twitter and on Facebook or checked out the rotating featured items on the homepage of our Web site as we spent the month adventuring through botanical history with the women in our collections.

To Make a Prairie: Pollination and Human Understanding opening reception | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

New Archives’ collection added to Web site

We have added a finding aid for the William Winfield Ray collection of 20th-century botanists' correspondence and other materials, Archives collection no. 48. This collection is an arrangement of approximately 900 letters, postcards and other materials relating to botanists and naturalists throughout the 20th century. The material was received by the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation on 18 January 1968 from Professor William Winfield Ray (1909–1995). The collection has been digitized and is available as PDFs for downloading.

Abrams, LeRoy, 1874–1956
 | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

250 Years of Botany in America

For our informal lobby displays this year we depart from exploring our Institute history to celebrate the history of botany in America for the 250th anniversary of our country.

While we do not have a John Hancock autograph (his not being a botanist or naturalist), many others of note have left their John Hancocks scattered throughout our collections. We even have a letter from George III, who was the reason for the bold declaration of that famed signature. History is so fascinating and circular, complex and messy and, sometimes, tragic. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of America, we will grapple with our past while we seek to shape our future. In changing displays throughout the year, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation will examine the history of botany in America from the great exploring expeditions to the pioneering individuals with an idea or simply a need to see and collect the next plant on the trail. While we will embrace the lighter moments, we will illuminate the darker ones so that we may not repeat them. Join us as we celebrate the botanical explorations and discoveries that have made America a great land of diverse plant species and the men and women, indigenous and enslaved, Holocaust survivors escaping fascism and others seeking freedom, citizens and foreigners, who have sunk roots, literal or metaphorical, into the fertile soil of our country and contributed to the history of botany.

This month's inaugural display by Scarlett T. Townsend, Publication and Marketing Manager and Institute Historiographer, is about the connections among the expeditions, the explorers and us. It features the Spanish Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain and Rogers McVaugh; the Harriman Expedition to Alaska and Frederick Vernon Coville; Frederick Andrews Walpole; William Franklin Wight's manuscript Flora of Alaska; William Andrew Archer's Nevada Indian Medicine Project; and the Flora of North America project. In the process she and Director T. D. Jacobsen discovered that Wight's manuscript is likely the unfinished Flora of Alaska that he and Coville were preparing with illustrations by Walpole. Reuniting these three colleagues and the work they did so long ago made the research extra rewarding.

Check out the display through the middle of April, when we will explore new topics in botanical history.

To Make a Prairie: Pollination and Human Understanding opening reception | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

Tune in to WRCT Pittsburgh, 88.3 FM at 9:00 a.m. today (17 March) to listen to an interview with Senior Curator of Art Carrie Roy and Curator of Art Lydia Rosenberg about our spring exhibition, To Make a Prairie. If you don't catch that one, turn in again at 7:30 a.m. on Friday (20 March). The interview will be archived on Spotify.

To Make a Prairie: Pollination and Human Understanding opening reception | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

To Make a Prairie exhibition reviewed by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

What you never learned about the birds and the bees People once thought the world was flat. They also once believed that all flowering plants fertilized themselves. While the scientific battle to prove that...

To Make a Prairie: Pollination and Human Understanding opening reception

Join us Tuesday, 17 March (5:00–7:00 p.m.) for the opening reception of our spring exhibition, To Make a Prairie: Pollination and Human Understanding. Through historical specimens, illustrations and writings, To Make a Prairie traces the evolution of knowledge about plant reproduction from anecdotal observation to scientific fact and examines how those discoveries were shared, debated and accepted by the global community. At 5:30 p.m. in the gallery the curators will introduce the exhibition. The reception is free and open to the public.

To Make a Prairie: Pollination and Human Understanding opening reception | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

Celebrating Black History Month

We kick off Black History Month with a few items from the collection and a previous collaboration. In our Archives we have a portrait of and a letter from George Washington Carver (1864–1943), who was the first director of agriculture at the Tuskegee Institute, where he worked on sweet potatoes and peanuts.

In 2011–2012 we provided research assistance to Samuel Black, director of the African American Program at the Heinz History Center, as he created the exhibit From Slavery to Freedom. We provided images of plants that he identified as likely food/medicine sources for enslaved people heading to freedom.

Like many other organizations of a certain age, we don't have numerous items pertaining to people of color. While these offerings are meager, we do have the botanical illustrations of the native Antiguan John Tyley (ca.1773–after 1823). Please join us for Black History Month in 2027 when we will feature Tyley's work in an exhibition and the latest scholarly research into his life in an issue of Huntia, our journal of botanical history.

New hours for a new year | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.

22(1) Huntia published

In this issue of Huntia we explore the foundation of academia, the relationship between graduate students and their major professor. Using Linnaeus, our starting point for most things botanical, and his students, we see the beginning of that relationship that has evolved into what we have today. In "Linnaeus and coffee: An annotated English translation of the Linnaean dissertation Potus Coffeae (The coffee drink)" Fernando E. Vega, Alexander Vega, Maxwell Vega, Aaron P. Davis and Hanna Hodacs offer fresh insights. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy this stimulating read. Using a Linnaean china cup is optional but encouraged.

Our Linnaean china comes from Rachel Hunt's desire for a tea set patterned after one used by Linnaeus. Reproducing a replica set for her new library proved impractical. However, A-B Rörstrands Utställning of Stockholm, Sweden, sold a tea set designed for the Linné jubilee by Louise Adelborg. It bears a realistic reproduction of Linnaea borealis, the plant named by Linnaeus. Our original set included 144 teacups with saucers, 216 plates in two sizes and 12 each of tea pots, sugar bowls, cream pitchers and hot water pots. In 1967 the coffee cups and pots were added. Whether you have the original or a homage, lift a cup in honor of Linnaeus, his students and graduate students everywhere who continue to toil in the service of botany.

If you're ready to take us on a new journey in the pages of our journal of botanical history, check out the topics and submission guidelines available on the Huntia (https://url.huntbot.org/1s) page.
https://url.huntbot.org/3o

www.huntbotanical.org

Group visits in December

We were pleased to welcome a couple of groups for visits in December. Staff from the Office of International Education at Carnegie Mellon joined us on 11 December, and on 12 December a group of volunteers from the Jewish Family and Community Services of Pittsburgh visited. Both groups enjoyed a tour of The Art and Science of Rafael Lucas Rodríguez Caballero with Archivist Nancy Janda and Curator of Art Lydia Rosenberg as well as a quick tour of our reading room. Our curators appreciated the enthusiasm, curiosity and attentiveness of the groups' members.

Contact us (https://url.huntbot.org/17) to schedule a tour or talk (https://url.huntbot.org/16) for your group.
https://url.huntbot.org/3n

Season’s Greetings | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation promotes the history of botany through its collections, research, exhibitions, publications, and services.