Record Linkage Using Graph Consistency

This paper provides a method for automated record linkage in the historical domain based on collective entity resolution. Multiple records are considered for linkage simultaneously, using plausible record sequences as a substitute for pair-wise record similarity measures such as string edit distance. The method is applied to the problem of family reconstruction from historical archives. A benchmark evaluation shows that the approach provides a computationally efficient way to produce family reconstructions which are useful in practise. Further improvements in linkage accuracy are expected by addressing data issues and linkage assumption violations.