LibraryConceptsRecord Linkage: Connecting the Same Person Across Databases
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Record Linkage: Connecting the Same Person Across Databases

Connecting a single person across multiple databases—census records, ship manifests, land deeds—is harder than it sounds because names shift, ages change by a year between documents, and people move. The goal is gathering enough corroborating details (birthplace, spouse name, children's names) that you're confident it's the same individual, not an unfortunate coincidence.

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Why It Matters

Record linkage is the process of identifying and connecting records from different data sources that refer to the same individual, using overlapping details like name, age, birthplace, and household members to confirm a match across census years, vital records, and immigration files.

AI dramatically accelerates this process by probabilistically scoring thousands of potential matches at once, flagging high-confidence links for your review and surfacing connections that a manual search would almost certainly overlook.

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