First, I really like how this looks!
Some comments as I went through the different features:
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The getting started video placeholder got me thinking: for which kinds of users? That is, to navigate the site or to contribute to it? or both? Who would we expect to interact with the portal and how? (related to Topic 1.1)
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Search box currently says Search specimens. I guess I would rather put the focus on the collections upfront, and specimens as secondary to it.
Related, I think it will be important to understand which are the limits, and the overlaps, between the NHC site and what we can find in e.g. GBIF. Not sure about those borders, and not sure about a best way to communicate them to users (both searching users and provider users). We probably want to emphasize that both resources do not compete, but rather complement each other. One way to consider would be to have links on any given specimen page saying “view in GBIF”. (Related Topic 2.5.)
That leads me to the question on how are the specimens fed into this NHC portal. Are they meant to be managed completely separated from what’s already available through aggregators? Or, is it the idea to harvest e.g. all preserved specimens already in GBIF and deploy them grouped by collection? From the description above, I understand that the latter would be the case, as much as possible. If so, info about some specimens may not be in any aggregator yet. Would the path be to publish through an aggregator --> harvest --> show in NHC portal? or would there be an alternative direct path into the NHC?
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I’d be very interested in understanding how the clustering would work. I can imagine different features to cluster on, like the ones mentioned in the description, and e.g.: collection by taxon (same or close taxa in the same collection), specimens by collectors, etc. Depending on what one would want to do, clustering may need to be based on different criteria. Could clustering have filters/criteria associated to choose from? That is, will the user be able to choose parameters that would change the algorithm parameters, or even the algorithms themselves?
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Collections. When I look at the collections list I would like to see value highlighted. For instance, a little (colorful) icon representing that a collection contains very old records, or endemic species, etc. Indicators of the singularities of any given collection that makes it unique (Somewhat related Topic 1.4)
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I really like the map of collections that meet certain criteria. Visually very appealing. (maybe something obvious, but I would expect each little dot to display an info box with minimal data and a link to the collection’s page).
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I also really like the collectors and identifiers page, with the activity graphs. May be beyond, but I would like to be able to search by collector on a map over time.