OpenRefine Reconciliation

Aleph connects to OpenRefine, a free data processing tool, in order to perform batch lookups for a list of entities (e.g. people and companies).

Entity reconciliation can be used to check if any entry in a column of data mentions persons or companies of interest. More generally, the function enables another application - typically OpenRefine - to link up (reconcile) values in it’s own data with the entities stored in Aleph.

To use the reconciliation function, first install the free Open Refine tool on your computer and create a new project from a spreadsheet with at least one column that contains the names of people or companies.

In the header of that column, select the drop down menu, Reconcile, then Start reconciling….
The following window allows you to add a new standard reconciliation service. Paste the URL for Aleph and click Add Service.

It’s recommended to run the reconciliation service against a specific dataset on Aleph, rather than a full site. The reconciliation URL for each dataset is shown on the dataset’s overview page.
Then choose Start reconciling to begin the reconciliation process.

For further information, consult the following documents:

Data Augmentation in Refine (YouTube video).
Reconciliation in the Open Refine wiki.