On the value of "useless data": Infrastructures, biodiversity, and policy.

As the ability to meaningfully process increasingly large quantities of data has improved, the need for systems to support the aggregation and subsequent use of disparate smaller datasets is correspondingly greater. The GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) is just one such project among a larger group seeking to aggregate the smaller, focused, and disparate sources of information generated for the work of science. GBIF is simultaneously an effort to coordinate and aggregate digital species occurrence data and digitize natural history collections into a single global-scale resource for biodiversity work. The basis for this paper is a critical study of the GBIF database and data portal as a socio-technical system.ye