Peter,
Have you ever thought of going outside the state of California with your specimens? I see no reason why you could not contact an out of state herbarium that you can determine has online access and inquiring with them as to their desire to obtain whatever specimens you may have available to send to them.
On in state herbaria I would contact whatever herbaria and see if they are interested in your specimen first before submitting same for inclusion into their database. With specimens that have been extensively collected over the years the need to retain any current collection may not be possible except in the case of retaining exceptionally prepared specimens.
And on your subject of developing your own database I would see no problem in doing so as it should be relatively easy but very time consuming. In such a case I would recommend that you use a free site provider such as Photobucket on which to post your images of your database. While this may be somewhat limiting it does provide a challenge on how you handle the presentation in order to make it relevant.
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