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While the core data in the paintings is solid (variety names, locations, crop types), there’s room for improvement in capturing the rich contextual details these watercolors contain.

Many paintings include handwritten notes about growers, donors, originating institutions, and storage or transport conditions. This information provides valuable historical context, but it’s often written in faded ink and cursive that you really have to squint to make out. I tried using OCR and AI to extract this text automatically, but ultimately it didn’t work very well, and I could use some human help.

If a lot of people are interested in helping out, I will make the data directly editable, but in the meantime if you see something to improve shoot me an email (haupt.andrew@protonmail.com) and I’ll handle it. If you want to get involved in some other way, let me know as well! Next up I’m planning to start fleshing out information on the particular varieties included in the collection.