[Taxacom] Who uses biodiversity data and why?

[Roderic Page]

A couple of comments on this thread. Firstly, I hope GBIF are reading  
this thread...

Second, leaving aside the issue of the extent of local, "private"  
knowledge, I wonder whether part of the problem is that services like  
GBIF -- valuable as they are -- aren't addressing some important  
questions that many people actually have. For example, Google Maps  
employs massive amounts of global data, but people use it to address  
local (sometimes very local) questions: where does Joe live? what  
hotels are near? where can we eat? etc. The fact that Google Maps  
"mashups" have taken off suggests this is information people want.

I'm not sure the issue is making a globally available (which is  
essential, if only because it is probably the case that somebody  
somewhere else in the world can make better use of the data than  
you), but that the way that data is accessed, queried, and displayed  
is within a global framework - "where in the world does species x  
occur?", whereas I think Bob Mesibov is asking "what occurs near me?".

Again, I suspect this is partly a case of the taxonomic community  
developing services that we think would be useful (I like to see  
species distributions on a gobal map), rather than services that  
people outside our community would actually use.

As a trivial example, it's the difference between knowing that the  
Adeile Penguin occurs natively in Antarctica, versus knowing that I  
can see a stuffed specimen in my university here in Glasgow, and see  
them live in Edinburgh zoo 45 mins away by car.

Regards

Rod


----------------------------------------
Professor Roderic D. M. Page
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