Initial dataset card

README.md

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+---
+license: other
+pretty_name: Card File of the Flora of the Metropolitan Parks (Harvard Botany, 1894–1895)
+tags:
+- index-cards
+- archives
+- glam
+- ocr
+- botany
+- herbarium
+- public-domain
+- natural-history
+task_categories:
+- image-to-text
+- image-classification
+size_categories:
+- 1K<n<10K
+language:
+- en
+---
+
+# Card File of the Flora of the Metropolitan Parks (Harvard Botany Libraries, 1894–1895)
+
+**4,574 botanical specimen index cards** from the Harvard University Botany
+Libraries' *Card File of the Flora of the Metropolitan Parks, 1894–1895 (bulk)*,
+compiled by **Walter Deane** (1848–1930). Records flora of the Metropolitan Park
+system around Boston — Middlesex Fells Reservation, Blue Hills, Norfolk County,
+and adjacent areas — with one card per specimen entry: species, locality,
+collection date, collector, habitat notes.
+
+Harvested from the 7 IA items
+[`mhg795390874cardfile{1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 2a, 2b, 3}`](https://archive.org/details/mhg795390874cardfile1a).
+
+Each row pairs the full-resolution card scan with the Internet Archive's ABBYY OCR
+text and full provenance back to the source IA item.
+
+## Source & licence
+
+- **Source:** Harvard University Botany Libraries — *Card File of the Flora of
+  the Metropolitan Parks, 1894–1895* (compiled by Walter Deane).
+  Source IA items: [`mhg795390874cardfile1a`](https://archive.org/details/mhg795390874cardfile1a)
+  through `cardfile3`.
+- **Licence:** **Public Domain.** Harvard's own IA item metadata declares
+  `possible-copyright-status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT`. The cards are 1894–1895 records;
+  the compiler Walter Deane died in 1930. Please retain the attribution to
+  Harvard University Botany Libraries on reuse.
+
+## Schema
+
+| column | type | description |
+|---|---|---|
+| `image` | image | the card scan (JPEG, re-encoded from the IA JP2 derivative) |
+| `ocr_text` | string | full-item OCR text from the IA ABBYY/DjVu output |
+| `page` | int | page index within the source item |
+| `source_id` | string | IA item identifier |
+| `source_title` | string | IA item title |
+| `source_collection` | string | IA collection (`harvardbotanylibraries`) |
+| `source_url` | string | `https://archive.org/details/<source_id>` |
+| `license` | string | `undetermined` (legacy field — the actual status is NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT per Harvard) |
+| `theme` | string | `natural_history_specimen` |
+
+> Note: rows carry `license: undetermined` from the harvest pipeline, which only
+> reads the IA `licenseurl` field. Harvard's `possible-copyright-status:
+> NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT` lives in a separate metadata field and is the operative
+> rights statement.
+
+## How this was built
+
+Part of an exploration of public archival index-card collections for GLAM/AI work.
+The reusable harvester (resumable per-item parquet shards, polite IA access,
+JP2 → JPEG decode via Pillow) runs on Hugging Face Jobs against a curated list of
+IA items.
+
+Productive IA discovery query (generic full-text is too noisy):
+```
+title:"index cards" AND mediatype:texts
+```
+
+## Citation
+
+> Deane, Walter (compiler). *Card File of the Flora of the Metropolitan Parks,
+> 1894–1895 (bulk).* Harvard University Botany Libraries. Available via the
+> Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/mhg795390874cardfile1a>.
+
+## Sibling datasets
+
+[`biglam/index-cards-cas-galapagos-stewart-specimens`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/biglam/index-cards-cas-galapagos-stewart-specimens)
+— Alban Stewart's 1905–06 Galápagos expedition specimen card file (CAS Archives).
+
+Browse the wider catalogue:
+[BigLAM "Index card datasets" collection](https://huggingface.co/collections/biglam/index-card-datasets-68e38b801f349a4ef520cf03).