LINKS. A System for Historical Family Reconstruction in the Netherlands

LINKS stands for 'LINKing System historical family reconstruction' and is a software system to link nominal data from the Dutch archives ultimately reconstruct individuals families. We present background philosophy of this matching explain its structure functioning. Currently core consists indexed civil certificates. These certificates are available 1812 — start Vital Registration until year they confidential based on privacy laws. For more than 20 years, thousands volunteers have been working build index, which contains not only names newborn, married deceased persons, but also their parents, places birth, ages sometimes occupational titles. The includes standardization all input before linking, record linkage procedures identification unique persons involved in system. All processes repeatable strict distinction maintained between source data, standardized, linked enriched released data. Moreover, informs about kinds errors inconsistencies found during cleaning process. will discuss two systems, first original querying that runs within MySQL database environment second newly developed system, called burgerLinker, knowledge graphs designed as can be used independently made open software. Finally, we most important releases so far: national birth parental marriage certificates, creating families pedigrees an integrated dataset trees four provinces.