A function to obtain contact information for data contributors from the Neotoma Paleoecological Database.
get_contact(contactid, contactname, contactstatus, familyname)Contact ID is a numerical value associated with the Neotoma Contact table's numerical Contact ID.
A character string indicating the data contributors' project, organization or personal name. May be a partial string and can include wildcards.
The current status of the contact. Possible values include: active, deceased, defunct, extant, inactive, retired, unknown.
A character string. Full or partial string indicating the contact's last name.
The function takes parameters defined by the user and returns a list of contact information supplied by the Neotoma Paleoecological Database. The user may define all or none of the possible fields. The function contains data chacks for each defined parameter.
The function returns either a single item of class "try-error" describing
the reason for failure (either mis-defined parameters or an error from the Neotoma API),
or a table of contacts, with rows corresponding to the number of individual
contacts returned by the Neotoma API. Each row entry includes the following parameters:
contact.name Full name of the person, last name first (e.g. "Simpson, George Gaylord") or name of organization or project (e.g. "Great Plains Flora Association").
contact.status Current status of the person, organization, or project. Field links to the ContactStatuses lookup table.
family.name Family or surname name of a person.
leading.initials Leading initials for given or forenames without spaces (e.g. "G.G.").
given.names Given or forenames of a person (e.g. "George Gaylord"). Initials with spaces are used if full given names are not known (e.g. "G. G").
suffix Suffix of a person's name (e.g. "Jr.", "III").
title A person's title (e.g. "Dr.", "Prof.", "Prof. Dr").
phone Telephone number.
fax Fax number.
email Email address.
url Universal Resource Locator, an Internet World Wide Web address.
address Full mailing address.
notes Free form notes or comments about the person, organization, or project.
contact.id Unique database record identifier for the contact.
alias.id The ContactID of a person's current name. If the AliasID is different from the ContactID, the ContactID refers to the person's former name.
Neotoma Project Website: http://www.neotomadb.org API Reference: http://api.neotomadb.org/doc/resources/contacts
# To find all data contributors who are active:
active.cont <- get_contact(contactstatus = 'active')
# To find all data contributors who have the last name "Smith"
smith.cont <- get_contact(familyname = 'Smith')
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