Slow, or no, accessioning of collections may include all of the reasons you suggest (insufficient funding, staffing, have been chronic and widespread issues for herbaria).
Also, priorities of herbaria (and their curators) may not include the particular taxa or specimens that you have submitted to those particular herbaria; your specimens may require an unusual amount of preparation (repair, mounting, labelling, field notes processing, specimen or label-data quality issues, lost collections, very common specimen species, no capacity for online data preparation and availability, for example) that lowers their priority for accession.
Without having the explanations of the respective herbaria vis a vis your submissions, it would be mere speculation as to the particular reason(s) for lack of prompt (whatever that may be defined to be) accessions.
The fact that these herbaria have not even responded to your inquiries as to the status of processing your submissions suggests an even more fundamental problem.
Peter R.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterJWarner
..., I've experienced increasing frustration with the process of submitting botanical specimens and the timely accessioning of those specimens by herbaria. ... I realize some of these collections have not been accessioned, or the data has not been provided to the Online Consortium. This is a very serious shortcoming, in my opinion,...
Perhaps some ... can provide some information on why submitted specimens are not accessioned in a timely manner, if the need for collecting is so great (an observation with which I agree, based on the sparse collection data available online). I also understand that some herbaria are not well funded or staffed, in which case I feel that the specimens might be moved to other herbaria where accessioning and data posting might be done more expeditiously.
..., I am interested in engaging others in a discussion about how to make more collections and accompanying data available....
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