Contact template

Contact_bims template is used to enter data related to a person or an institution. The contact entry can then be used in other templates such as phenotype_bims and accession_bims. In phenotype_bims, for example, there is a column called collector and users can enter one of the entries in contact_bims. In accession_bims, there is a column called germplasm_center and users can use one of the entries in contact_bims.

Below are descriptions for each of the columns in contact_bims. Columns with * are required. Type is a validated column.

• * contact_name: name of the contact. For contact_name of a person, it is recommended to enter full name (eg. John M. Smith).
• alias: any alias of the contact
• * type: type of the contact. Valid entries are person, company, database, institution, lab, and organization.
• first_name: First name of the person
• last_name: Last name of the person
• ORCID: ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) which is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify scientific and other academic authors and contributors.
• institution: name of the institution the person belongs to. This doesn’t have to be a separate entry in contact_bims.
• lab: name of the lab the person belongs to. This doesn’t have to be a separate entry in contact_bims.
• address: address of the contact
• email: email address of the contact
• phone: phone number of the contact
• fax: fax number of the contact
• title: job title of the person
• state: state of the contact
• country: country of the contact
• source: source of the data when the contact information is obtained from other databases
• last_update: date of the last update
• url: URL of homepage of the contact
• comments: any comments of the contact
• keywords: a maximum of 5 keywords that best describe the person's area of work
• ##property_name: user specified custom columns that should have ## as a prefix. It should match an entry in propery_bims with the type specified as contact.