Data Matching: Concepts and Techniques for Record Linkage, Entity Resolution, and Duplicate Detection by Peter Christen.
In the Foreword, William E. Winkler (U. S. Census Bureau and dean of record linkage), writes:
Within this framework of historical ideas and needed future work, Peter Christen’s monograph serves as an excellent compendium of the best existing work by computer scientists and others. Individuals can use the monograph as a basic reference to which they can gain insight into the most pertinent record linkage ideas. Interested researchers can use the methods and observations as building blocks in their own work. What I found very appealing was the high quality of the overall organization of the text, the clarity of the writing, and the extensive bibliography of pertinent papers. The numerous examples are quite helpful because they give real insight into a specific set of methods. The examples, in particular, prevent the researcher from going down some research directions that would often turn out to be dead ends.
I saw the alert for this volume today so haven’t had time to acquire and read it.
Given the high praise from Winkler, I expect it to be a pleasure to read and use.