neotoma (version 1.3.0)

get_contact: Get contact information.

Description

A function to obtain contact information for data contributors from the Neotoma Paleoecological Database.

Usage

get_contact(contactid, contactname, contactstatus, familyname)

Arguments

contactid

Contact ID is a numerical value associated with the Neotoma Contact table's numerical Contact ID.

contactname

A character string indicating the data contributors' project, organization or personal name. May be a partial string and can include wildcards.

contactstatus

The current status of the contact. Possible values include: active, deceased, defunct, extant, inactive, retired, unknown.

familyname

A character string. Full or partial string indicating the contact's last name.

Value

• 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.

References

Neotoma Project Website: http://www.neotomadb.org API Reference: http://api.neotomadb.org/doc/resources/contacts

Examples

#  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')