Fee for External Users of the Herbarium

[robert fogel]

The situation may be changing as our user base changes.  Reciprocity has
been among herbaria and universities, but we are now getting requests from
companies and public agencies.  Our traditional users enhance the
usefulness of our collections by annotations, publication, etc.  There was
also the expectation that we would receive loans in exchange for "free."
The new users often mention our specimens in internal project reports that
are not peer reviewed literature and they do not hold collections that
might be borrowed.  Do we subsidize the new users or do we go to a two
tiered system where our traditional users continue to receive loans for
"free" and non-traditional users (not listed in Index Herbariorum) pay
actual costs of assembling, shipping, and refiling a loan?

Robert Fogel
Curator of Fungi (MICH)